Palace at Versailles

We took the regional train from Paris to Versallies about an hour away one overcast morning. We hoped to have an earlier start but didn’t arrive until 10am with the line already out the door exposed to the drizzling rain. This would be one line of many we would endure that morning as Versailles is one of the most poorly planned tourist sights I have ever seen. It must have been those systems engineering classes I took in college but the bottlenecks of throughput between the ticket line, the security line, the baggage line, the headset line, and on and on and on meant the planners had absolutely no foresight into human behavior or even made any attempt at flow optimization.

Two hours after we arrived, we were finally in the palace and battling it out with the thousand other tourists. It was madness, there were people literally everywhere, swinging off the priceless crystal glass chandeliers, climbing the brocade curtains, even hiding under Louis XIV’s lavishly decorated bed. Suffice it to say, we didn’t really enjoy the interior too much, and the audio tour was hopelessly boring made worse by a stuffy British accent. We did our rounds through the King and Queens rooms and the Hall of Mirrors, diligently trying to get our moneys worth, at nearly $20/person that’s rather tough to do and still leave with your sanity.

We hightailed it to the gardens, which was more our style even as the rain quickened into a steady flow, and blew right past the ticket station. We figured it was free admission due to the weather, and only later found out when we were returning that we still needed to pay for a ticket. At that point we had spent all afternoon in the garden and instead of paying $10 each to exit post haste, we opted to walk out and around the palace, adding several more miles to our exhausted feet.

But back to the story. We sat on a bench overlooking a lovely groomed garden and enjoyed our picnic lunch of brie sandwiches and paprika chips. Later opening a bottle of red wine at the very fitting Bacchus fountain, offering a libation to the god of wine. We had to keep the eating and drinking on the down-low as they (almost inconceivably) don’t allow picnics and rather you spend fifty dollars in one of the three restaurants not provided for your wallet’s pleasure.

We bundled up from the rain, and Ron put his backpack on his front before zipping up, making him look pregnant or inordinately fat. Passerbys snickered a bit at his rotund belly and yes, so did I getting a sneak peek of twenty years down the road.

Instead of renting bikes and dealing with the muddy backside that would surely follow, we opted to walk the 6 kilometers around the entire grand canal. In hidden corners of the forest, I imagined a place where Marie Antoinette may have walked, alone and contemplative, and filthy stinkin rich.

At the furthest end of the canal, we made friends with some hungry swans, their slender necks straining out of the water (that for some dark and primordial reason you yearn to grab hold of and strangle) and their orange beaks eagerly pecking food from my hand.

Unfortunately, just like Venice, Ron lost all of his pictures in a computer mishap, and some were sensational like a crane just taking flight over the canal and a creepily lit desolate forest path, so you will have to imagine them in your minds eye and send him compliments.

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J’adore Paris

Paris really is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. There are small unexpected wonders everywhere amidst the myriad of parks, cafes, and museums where one alone would make anyplace wondrous and special. A city meant to be walked with large sidewalks lining wide boulevards.

We bought a couple books of metro tickets and quickly became pros at the underground system. Although it was highly enlightening when we found out you can use your ticket twice. Duh. And once when we were running late Ron ran out of tickets at the most inopportune time. I waited impatiently on the opposite side of the turnstile while he waited in an endlessly long line. I saw a grandpa struggle with his balance and arthritis to awkwardly jump over the turnstile for a free metro ride. A few seconds later over bounded Ron. I guess if grandpa can do it…

Unlike most things that don’t live up to the hype, the Louvre actually is all it’s cracked up to be, an oversized and tastefully designed complex housing millions of works of art. I’ve heard that if you spent a minute with each piece it would take you 150 years to see it all. Sometimes the sweeping staircases, perfectly sunlit courtyards, and grand ballrooms overshadow the art it is supposed to showcase. But I wondered (in irritation) how on earth they can get away with only four bathroom stalls for the 4,000 daily visitors and they don’t have a single drinking fountain and make you fork over twenty dollars for water. The nerve. We especially enjoyed the Medieval Louvre remains and the historical displays of the museum itself. During World War II the Louvre was emptied of all its treasures and stored in secret lest the Mona Lisa be sacked and carried off to Germany.

We visited the Musee d’Orsay which is a transformed train station housing lot of famous impressionist works and Rodin sculptures. Rodin’s mistress, Camille Claudel, also a sculptor and apprentice of his, went crazy when he wouldn’t leave his wife, and she spent the last thirty years of her life in the insane asylum. This is a haunting sculpture of hers, in between the incalculable distance of the girls outstretching hand, you can feel her longing pain….

We visited the nearby Pere Lachaise Cemetery one dreary afternoon to see some of the famous graves of Chopin, Gertrude Stein, Edith Piaf, Colette, Oscar Wilde, and of course Jim Morrisson. The latter, definitely underwhelming, since some grave robber stole the famous bust of “James” back in the eighties. Now its just like any old grave in any old cemetery in the world, except for the incoherent letters and drug offerings left strewn on the exposed dirt grave. And to add a dramatic flair to the afternoon, the sky darkened and it started thundering and raining. We splashed through muddy puddles between the headstones with the lightning striking sideways in jagged spikes across the bitterly gray sky. Running breathless through the cemetery we found shelter under the awning of a nearby café and enjoyed a nearly perfect espresso, safe and snug from the cold rain.

One night we met up with a Canadian couple, Jay and Corina, who are on a strikingly similar world tour as us. We met online several months ago and read each others blogs, share travel notes, and the inevitable struggles of life on the road. It was just pure chance that we crossed paths in Paris and we jumped at the chance to meet each other in person. We ended up at a pricy restaurant in the ultra-touristy St. Michel area, more by accident than choice, as their host struggled to find a restaurant to suit the burgeoning group of all the friends-of-friends that showed up. We numbered an even dozen when we sat down, which may or may not have added to the wait for our food and the inexcusable serving of some dishes over two hours later. Ron and I shared the French staples of an onion soup, bowl of moules mariniere, and a half bottle of red wine, but for the over $60 bill we still felt hungry and a bit ripped off, lamenting on the lackluster taste. Once again feeling thankful we live in San Francisco where good food is a right not a luxury.

Jay & Corina - hope you are doing well in Spain!

We went back to the Eiffel Tower to see it at night. Ron got to use his new tripod (bought off the street for twenty bucks) to get some stellar nightshots. Unfortunately we missed going to the top. The tower itself is open until midnight but they stop selling tickets at 9:30pm, and our dinner ran a bit too late to make it on our second to last night in Paris. We also missed Saint Chapelle which is supposed to have amazing stained glass windows. I guess that means we will just have to return.

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Our Friends from Brittany

We met our friends from Rennes under the Eiffel Tower at high noon and began our marathon adventure around Paris. Eva had lived only a few hours from Paris her whole life and had never been. Never been! I suppose it’s like if I’ve never been to San Jose, but San Jose is no Paris. Can you imagine?! So we were sightseeing together. Her cousin Anthony, like a young Russell Crowe and fellow musician of a band called Pop n Roll, bonded with Ron over music immediately. We met them when they were traveling through the US and hosted them through couchsurfing.com for a couple nights in our apartment in San Francisco.

First stop was lunch at a nearby brasserie where we had faux fillet and pomme frites or grilled steak and fries. Yum…one of the better meals we would have in Paris, and so simple. There was an older woman at a nearby table, drunk off white wine at 1 in the afternoon, a self proclaimed abstract artist and dancer she was a real character and we chatted with her for at least half an hour.
Next we went to the Montmartre area and climbed the hundreds of stairs to Sacre Couer, french for sacred heart. The climb under the savage sun wasn’t very fun but the view of the city afterward was well worth the effort.

On to Notre Dame, we followed the snaking line into the building, one of the greatest gothic cathedrals in the world. Dark and somberly we circumnavigated the interior in silence. A man sneezed and I jokingly shushed him and burst in to giggles. It is a million more times fun to sightsee with friends. In this photo you can see the first flying buttresses on a cathedral, like spider arms supporting the body of the building.

Taking a brief break by the river Seine. We laughed and talked and shared a bottle of sweet wine called Melmor, they brought from Brittany.

We walked down the river toward the Louvre and the famous pyramid entrance designed by I.M. Pei.

Through the Tuileries garden, down the long Champs-Elysees, towards the Arc de Triomphe.

We were dead tired by then, my legs about to fall off so we took the metro to Saint Denis-du Fauborg, back to our neighborhood for dinner. We sipped an apertif of Ricard. Ron had some delicious turkey dish with creamy gravy and I had a duck salad that had just a few too many gizzard parts in it. But I was too hungry to be overly picky.

This is where it starts to get blurry. First was the idea to get a bottle of vodka and a 6-pack of redbull at the local super-marche. Very sensible, because it can be 10 euro a drink at some bars. We would save a fortune! We went back to our apartment, mixed drinks, and Ron dj’ed music on his Ipod for hours as background to our boisterous conversation.


And then at nearly 3am Ron and Anthony wanted “just one more”…

So we headed to a nearby bar. Eva and I stuck to the water but it displeased the greedy waiter not wanting us to sit and order nothing, in his dead empty bar in the dead of the night. The bill came to over 25 euro for two drinks, and we were all shocked. But I did have an opportunity to use some French I just learned. “Va tu faire foutre!”, I said clearly and confidently to the face of the waiter, he frowned and slunk back inside. Serves you right, jerk.

The next day came too soon and arrived with a head spinning hangover. Ugh. Worth it? Absolutely, we had a grand time. We were sad to see our friends go, but only until next time. Eva is thinking about moving to Quebec early next year so perhaps our next adventure will be there!


Eva et Anthony, nous vous aimons!

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Vacation from the vacation

It’s all a little overwhelming. I thought the worst part was planning things before we left but there were a zillion details undone. On purpose actually. So that we could go with the flow and see where our instincts and hearts took us. But there’s still a lot of pressure, its not exactly like lackadaisical wandering. Our whole lives have become almost routine amidst the chaos. Every couple days we are in a new city, we need to figure out how we get there, where to find a room, what is the new currency, how to speak a new language.

And then this blog and the flickr photos adds another layer of “things to do”, although I am enjoying writing and sharing immensely, it is always way behind our trip and that nags at me in odd hours of the morning when I should be sound asleep.

Not to mention the daily chores of securing water and food, washing clothes in the sink, organizing and packing the packs. And then don’t forget why you are there in the first place - there are things to see, places to visit, and hours of jostling with other tourists for the photo of that famous whatchamacallit. Ron has made a sport of taking pictures of tourists taking pictures. Of course, there is down-time after all that, but I find I just want to read or sleep in the lulls of the day.

Travel days are the worst, the most stressful and most tiring as you lug your stuff from one city to the next on trains, planes, and automobiles - always hoping you are in one piece at the end of the day with a roof over your head.

The fast pace of our travels is really draining, but we knew we were in for a whirlwind tour in Europe. The high costs of everything require us to go quickly and see what we can in a span of a couple months so we can get to the promised land of an undeveloped country with cheap costs. But we need to slow down a bit and take a vacation from the trip. A short breath to reflect on everything, reorganize, and rejuvenate. What better place to spend two weeks than Paris?! It was good ole craiglist to the rescue where we found a perfect apartment to rent.

Rented out by a super cool guy and film student named Martin, it was actually his apartment but he was taking some time off this summer to travel to Spain. Our dates matched up and it was an instant deal. In the 10th arrondissement, or black ghetto of Paris, where Francophile ex-pats from Nigeria, Senegal, and Cameroon talk excitedly (and loudly) on the street corners. There must be more hair salons in this district per capita than cafes, and a fight broke out at one outside our window the first day we arrived. It got pretty heated between two women, must have been a hair weave gone wrong or a man who done them wrong. Not much else could get women to brawl like that.

There was also an art gallery across the street that had a show Paris Tragique with artists armed with cans of spray paint creating graffiti art for the young Parisian crowd sipping wine out of plastic cups.

Behind a faded green door, it was a small 1 bedroom flat up three flights of creaky worn wooden stairs, and was our little cozy and humble home in Paris.

Complete with a fantastic dvd collection (lovingly stocked by a real film buff) we watched classic movies everyday for two weeks like Down by Law, Duel, Full Metal Jacket, Cabaret, Rumble Fish, and Lost Silver.

The only complaint, and believe me it was almost a deal breaker, was the fact the internet went out the day before we showed up. I was so looking forward to waking up with coffee and getting online to research things, skyping our families, and finally catching up with this blog. Martin was nice enough to drop the price a little and it did start working again, but only a day or two before we left. Oh well. C’est la vie. I’ll catch up someday…

The neighborhood we stayed in was colorful, not in a scary way, but definitely not a tourist district. A street over was Brady passage, a miniature India, with the mesmerizing smell of cooking curry, and great 5 euro daily specials (or plats du jour). There was also a KFC on a nearby corner, and I hate to admit it but we bought 2 buckets of chicken while we were there, and nearly a third one evening when we came back exhausted from sight seeing. Ok there’s really no excuse, it’s finger lickin good and I can’t resist it, so why try?

Another absolute fixture of our daily life in Paris was the local Lidl, a discount grocery store where you can get champagne for cheaper than water (only 1.09 euro!), so cheap Ron and I felt compelled to drink a bottle (almost everyday) with our home cooked meals. We stocked up on groceries and cooked eggs for breakfast, made salami and brie sandwiches for lunch, and spicy sausage, cheesy potatoes, and green beans for dinner.

They charge you a quarter per grocery bag, a great ploy to encourage recycling, and then expect you to sack your own groceries. And quickly! The line won’t wait for you so hurry up you dumb American.

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