Paris- Round 2 January 24, 2009

 

Carousel and Sacre Coeur in Montmarte

 

clouds break over Paris

looking down from Sacre Coeur

me in Paris

 

the amazing chocolate pistachio croissant (cheers Megan)

Eiffel Tower from a distance

Eiffel Tower in chocolate

 

painters in Montmarte

windmill in Montmarte (think Amalie)

my glove fell in love at the Louvre

Saint Honore

 

French maid storefront

lavender honey chocolate

Paris galleria

French cheese

 

chocolate bark

Obama shirt

Pompideau

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 20, 21 & 22, 2009

Our hotel room at the Best Western Lorette Opera was absolutely great! The place is beautiful and a great deal for Paris. Two small perks our room didn’t have were a tea kettle and refrigerator, but we were able to keep things cool outside our window. I definitely recommend this place to anyone going to Paris.

We went our own separate ways for the afternoon and wandered around Montmarte. I found a great little shop with fresh baked goods and picked up a pocket of food. It was sort of like phyllo dough but a little more moist and inside was potato, french cheese and tomato. It was delicious. I also picked up another new item, a pistachio chocolate croissant, which was amazingly delicious and also picture worthy. I took it with me on my climb up to the Sacre Coeur, a large church on top a hill overlooking Paris. The sun broke through the clouds for a moment and dramatically lit up the Paris skyline. It was a favorite moment on the trip… kind of a deep breath.

After walking around Montmarte, Tara and I watched Obama become inaugurated on CNN. What a trip to watch it from France! The French here seem to like Obama or at the very least have hope like we do for what he will do in the near future. One thing is for sure- They don’t like Bush too much. One person in the Metro started talking to me about how Bush is buddies with the President of Columbia, who the Frenchman didn’t like. Another told Tara and I that Bush put a $3 tax on a particular type of French cheese coming into the U.S. just because he didn’t like the French. Most are hopeful that Obama will be better. I hope so too.

Tara and I spent the last day of our trip wandering around Paris. We started out heading down to the Louvre (don’t laugh) to look at the bookstore. My glove fell in love with the Louvre and decided to stay there. It’s since been replaced with an Italian version (more later on that). Afterwards, we wandered up to Saint Honore, a street with high end designer stores, and window shopped. My favorite display was a French maid’s outfit in a lingerie store window… It’s as classic French as it gets. Next we decided to head in the direction of the Bastille, although we never got there. Instead, we found ourselves absorbed with pedestrian streets in the 1st Arrondissement lined with chocolate, cheese and cute stores everywhere. We ended up in the Pompideau bookstore for awhile. Then I had to leave to buy my train ticket to Florence for the next day. I met Tara back at the hotel later and we went back to Montmarte to sit down for a cafe and debrief our trip.

The morning of January 22nd, we were up very early to say goodbye. I headed to catch my early train to Florence, while Tara headed off to the airport to fly back to NY. Aurevoir la France!

France- Marseille and Aix-En-Provence January 24, 2009

 

view from Marseille train station

flowers in Marseille

entrance to Marseille harbor

Marseille beach

awesome candy store in Marseille

moss fountain in Aix-En-Provence

windy street in Aix

view from our room at Hotel Du Globe in Aix

morning light in Aix

Tara sneaking a peek at Cezanne's house

the most we could see of Cezanne's porch

 

 

January 19th and 20th, 2009

We completely improvised our trip to Marseille and Aix-En-Provence. We wanted to see the Mediterranean coast, so we went to Marseille in search of it. The town was not what we expected. To start with, it was more of a city than a town. The security guard who helped us find the lockers in the train station told us to beware of thieves in the streets. Walking in the direction of the port was definitely a bit sketchy. One person later called it “Little North Africa.” One man approached us wanting to take our camera to take pictures of us (and perhaps keep it for himself) but we played dumb. The place was definitely more “real” than any other place we’d seen yet in France. We did wander into an awesome candy store though and eventually found a tourist office where the man helping us said that Tara looks like the French President’s wife, the model Carla Bruni. Afterwards, we stumbled into a cute little area with an Indian restaurant where we had a vegan lunch. Afterwards, we walked up to a vantage point and saw the sea. It didn’t look far to walk to, so we pressed on and finally found the beach. Sadly, it was disappointing. The place was not at all what it looked like in pictures and the sky was grey and the sidewalk was smelly. A bit defeated, we made our way back to the train station and hopped a train to Aix-En-Provence. On the way to Aix we saw two hills full of shacks where people lived. While we were greatly disappointed in spending our precious time in Marseille, we decided it wasn’t a waste. We got to see the kinds of things generally left out of tourist books and they too are part of France. It gave us perspective.

Aix-En-Provence was much more impressive. It had wide tree lined streets like in Paris but still held a small town atmosphere. There were shops everywhere lining the smaller sidestreets featuring good design and high end products. We found a juice bar and passed creperies. I could happily spend a year living there. Tara and I wandered around and shopped until the stores closed at 7. Then we met back at the hotel and went back out for a great glass of wine and a good conversation. It is one of my favorite memories on our trip thus far.

The next morning we walked to Cezanne’s house up the hill from our hotel. We did get there and although the tourist attraction wasn’t open yet for us to see his studio, we did see the general area of where he lived and painted. As a special treat for Tara, the sun was actually out too with clear skies for the first time on our entire trip. Mission accomplished. We caught our train and headed back to Paris.

France- Avignon January 24, 2009

 

Avignon was lit at night by lights like this all over

Tara in our room at Hotel de l'Horloge

 

our bathroom at Hotel de l'Horloge, complete with bathrobes, slippers and bath salts

I've never seen so many fish as at the Avignon fish market

Tara wine

Graffiti on a French door

 

street in Avignon

candy bikini

Hotel de l'Horloge

looking out the window

 

room with a view

chocolate ganache tart

Popal Palace

town of Avignon

 

Tara and I

cross

Popal Palace

carousel

 

public art

The morning of Saturday, January 16th at the Taylor hotel, Tara and I overslept. We decided to split up. She went to find soy milk while I figured out how to get my train pass. I had planned to order one through Rail Europe, but didn’t realize they needed three days to ship it and I waited until it was too late. I would have had to pay nearly an extra $150 to get it shipped internationally. So, I still didn’t know how I was going to handle it. The trains to Amboise were inexpensive so I just bought them outright. The trains to Avignon were not so cheap. I couldn’t find information about it online so my only option was to go to the only place I knew that sold them, which happened to be a different train station than the one we were leaving from to go to Avignon. Time was running out, so I decided the best thing to do was leave Tara a note with the hotel information in Avignon and go to the station by myself in hopes of getting a pass and get back to the correct station in time to hop on the right train. Well, an hour later after taking a metro and waiting in three lines, one of them 40 mins. long, I finally got my pass but found that Tara’s train was booked full. I got a reservation for the next train leaving four hours later around 5 o’clock. By the time I got into Avignon it was about 10 p.m. Thankfully, Tara had found her way safely and the hotel had let her check in early… and what a gorgeous hotel room!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We stayed at Hotel de l’Horloge overlooking a main square with a Carousel and cafe chairs sprawled out into the plaza with Christmas lights hanging overhead. Our room had high ceilings with windows everywhere and it stretched around the corner. We had a bath tub with bath salts and robes and slippers… the works. We got a deal on it… Stay Saturday night, get Sunday night free. So we upgraded a bit since we were saving money. It was worth it to spend two nights in that room.

Our room also looked out over a Papal Palace built in the 1300s. At the time, the Pope wanted to move to France, so the church literally bought Avignon and made it the center of the Catholic religion. However, the people still wanted a pope in Italy so a second Pope was named. After many years of successive popes in Avignon, the centers combined again to result in one Pope in Rome. We explored the outside boundaries of this Popal Palace in an afternoon walk on Sunday, witnessing some incredible views and experiencing how old some of the buildings in Avignon are. The whole town is surrounded by a fortress wall.

The night we arrived Tara and I just relaxed and took advantage of our beautiful room and bath salts. In the afternoon before I got there, Tara had made friends with a woman who worked at the equivalent of a health food store who spoke good English and wanted to go to Canada. On Sunday, January 18, we started out the day by going to see her. It turns out she was hosting two Canadians that night from a website called couchsurfing.com. After a trip to the market and our walk around the Popal Palace, we went to meet up with them and have a glass of wine (for 2 Euros each… what a steal!). The market was amazing… with every kind of cheese you can think of, plenty of meat, vegetables, fruits, wine and fish. I couldn’t believe how many types of fish they had. I haven’t seen so many options of fish in my life. I’m sure there were many there I’d never heard of. I really wished we had a kitchen. We sampled olive oil and I snapped a picture of a wine called Tara. I purchased a variety of fruit, pizza, quiche and two sweets- creme brulee and a chocolate ganache tart that looked amazing. We had good conversations with the woman, her boyfriend and the two Canadians. They had just been woofing on a farm in Italy for a few months. My most interesting conversation was with the woman’s boyfriend. We were talking about the difference in systems between America and the US. Tara and I had been talking about the subject earlier in the day as well.

The French have their health insurance, childcare and retirement taken care of by their government. If they have nothing, they can still survive on help from the government. In America, we have to pay for childcare, health care and even for those who have retirement savings or pensions, they are increasingly in jeopardy. The conversation started with a comment of how Americans tend to switch jobs when they get tired of one, whereas the French tend to have a job and keep it for their whole life. I explained that Americans used to operate like that but the companies don’t take care of people the same way anymore. The system is fickle and even people who have worked for the same company for many years may not see the retirement money they’ve saved. I am completely in favor of the French way of taking long lunch breaks and 5 weeks paid vacation a year, but now I understand how they afford it. The everyday mandatory expenses for health and child care are taken care of. I never realized how much harder Americans have to work just to live. No wonder we don’t take vacations often enough.

On Sunday night after making friends and drinking wine, Tara and I went back to the hotel to figure out our plans for the next day. The villa we were planning on staying at in Aix-En-Provence notified us they would have no water so we booked another hotel in town.

Paris- Round 1 January 23, 2009

Taylor Hotel in Paris

Hotel De Ville with ice skaters

the Seine at night

Notre Dame at night

vegetarian meal... mmm... baked apples...

random Parisian street

string orchestra in the metro

sign for Gare de Lyon

whale sculpture outside of Gare de Lyon

We arrived in Paris on the evening of Friday, January 16th. We checked into the Taylor hotel in Marais district. It was a hotel Tara was excited about, but it turned out not to be as impressive as we expected. Still, it was adorable and the district was absolutely great. Marais is an area with a wealth of designers and a good nightlife. It’s not far from the Pompideau and Notre Dame. Our first order of business was finding food. We looked up a vegetarian restaurant and set out to find it on a 30 min. walk. We were not disappointed. The walk past the Pompideau, Hotel DeVille, Notre Dame and across the river was lovely. The restaurant itself was small with two levels. A spiral staircase joined the two floors. I ordered a meal including delicious baked apples stuffed with raisins and some type of marmalade. I also tried hard cider infused with black current, which was delicious. Tara had falafels and the most expensive salad either of us had seen… 15 Euro or about $20 for lettuce, hearts of palm and olive oil. Paris is expensive. At first I thought the server hated us but by the end of the night we were making conversation. He was from Tunesia in North Africa. I didn’t realize how many immigrants from Tunesia lived in France, but after meeting him they were popping up everywhere. Their sweets are very popular.

Around midnight on the way back to the hotel Tara and I were shouted at by guy on roller blades. “Where’re you from?” he asked in a clearly American slang. It turns out he is from Connecticut, as his sweatshirt clearly stated. He’s been living in Paris for the last six months for work and has traveled all around Europe. He said by far Paris is the most beautiful city in Europe, but the people are just as stubborn if not more so than Americans. Perhaps that’s why they don’t get along so well. It was so odd to run into an American from Connecticut on rollerblades at midnight next to the Pompideau. The more I travel, the smaller the world gets.

France- Chenonceau January 22, 2009

path to Chenonceau

Chenonceau, a chateau of the Loire Valley

room over the water... I saw a picture of this room also being used for hospital beds during WW2

view of gardens and water

bedroom

cornucopia

my favorite room

staircase

chapel

I think this building housed the stables... now it's a restaurant and museum

gardens

water in the gardens

Chenonceau over the water

more gardens

random ruins

maze garden

me at the center of the maze garden

one more of the front of the chateau

Friday, January 16, 2009-

The morning after we arrived in Amboise we chased down a bus for Chenonceau, a chateau of the Loire Valley. Although our bus driver was a bit arrogant, we managed to get there fine and had the perfect amount of time to walk around and see the place before catching the only bus back. A chateau is a large residence resembling a castle. Here’s the story in brief as I know it: Joan of Arc rode to Chinon to end the 100 Year war between England and France. The French won their territory and settled into a time of peace. During this time, members of the court built chateaux all along the Loire Valley to throw parties at and show off their wealth. This particular chateau, Chenonceau, was built by a warring lord before the war in order to control the crossing of the river. The place is actually built on top of the water like a glorified bridge. It was given to Diane de Poitiers, a mistress of King Henry II. When he died, his jealous wife Queen Catherine de Medici forced her out and took the place for herself. For decades she threw parties there.

The place had a strange and eerie feel to it… “bad karma” as Tara put it. It’s much smaller than I thought, making it an easy and not overwhelming place to visit. Catherine’s famed green study was intense. Her bedroom is large, decorated in blue with a small bed next to a large fireplace. The layout and features are standard for every bedroom. To one side is a small room with another fireplace and an even smaller room connected overlooking the water. The two smaller rooms are lined with patterned green velvet and the smallest room contains only a small desk. Her presence is most felt there.

The grounds had two sets of gardens, one in honor of the mistress and the other in honor of the Queen. There was also a maze garden off to one side in the woods with some unexplained ruins next to it. The maze was my favorite. Tara spent time wandering around the farm area off to the other side, which contained many buildings along with a children’s play area. The experience gave me insight into how it might have been to live in that time period. It may sound silly, but on the plane ride to Iceland I watched the movie the Dutchess. Although that was about British aristocracy and are now in France, the movie gave me a new perspective as to the conditions women of that time faced. If one was lucky enough to marry a Duke, life even then was not grand. Mistresses are everywhere along with bastard children and all she could do was hope to bear a son. The women never won. Being in Chenonceau, a chateau of women, reminded me of that movie and helped me relate to that time. Although I would have loved to see their parties and appreciate their traditions, I’m glad to live in the present moment.

The bus driver was nicer on the way back and Tara and I had an interesting time roughing out a conversation with a woman at the bus stop who spoke a little English. Back in Amboise, we stopped to have lunch at a corner cafe we had seen the night before. I had a mushroom and leek quiche (very good) and Tara had a salad with nuts (about all she can eat in France besides couscous/tabuli and fruit). I also sampled two liquor chocolates and a black current sweet that tastes like jam. All were delicious. On the way back to the hotel we wandered into a shop with salts from all over the world. I’d been looking for these for awhile so I was thrilled. On top of that, the shopkeeper spoke English and had traveled to New York six times and also Thailand. He loved talking to us… a little too much in fact. We had a train to catch.

 

p.s. John Craddock- This is dedicated for you.  Thanks for the advice.