Off into the wild bleu yonder

I was quite pleased leaving the office today. It's been a tough coupla months, and tomorrow (Thursday) is ....... another French holiday. And the French can't seem to get enough in the holiday category, so Friday is what they call a "bridge day" to bridge to the weekend.

Here's the kicker. I'm taking next week off, and we're headed to Italy. Whoohoo! I'm looking forward to pasta, sunshine, hiking, seasides, seafood, and of course gelato.

Grape Expectations

This weekend we visited the wine museum in Paris. We have fun seeking out offbeat museums, and this one certainly qualified as 'offbeat'.

It is located in cellars dug out by monks in the 15-16th century underneath the Passy area of Paris. Monks hug out, making their wine and storing it in these caverns for a few hundred years. Like a lot of religious sites, the monastery was destroyed in the French Revolution. The cellars survived, and now house the museum and a restaurant. It is a really atmospheric setting for the museum, wandering around in the cellars. It was a little freaky, they had maneqiuns set up depicting winemaking, and they kept freaking me out when I'd round a corner and see one (we were the only ones in the museum, so it was a little spooky exploring by ourselves anyway).

The museum contained various vineyard tools, grape harvesting and squishing implements, chemistry bits (for 'balancing the wine'), pichets, glasses for all types of wine, a bazillion different corkscrews, and a cognac distillery (distillery in upper left of picture).

The museum price includes a free glass of wine. Sante!

On Sunday we did a really fun walk. We started at Champs Elysees close to Grand Palais, walked down through the middle of Place de Concorde, thru Tuileries gardens (pausing to watch pony rides and have ice cream), up through the Louvre courtyard, over Pont Neuf, along Ile de la Cite (and the gardening shops), along Ile St. Louis, and cross back towards Bastille at blvd Henri IV. I could just walk forever here. 

Vach'Art Invasion

Paris has been invaded by Vach'Art. Life sized cows are all over the city, decorated in different ways. We stumbled across some of them when walking the city this weekend. I just love to walk the streets here, it is very relaxing after being caged up in an office all week.

In the upper left of the pic, notice the faucet hanging off the bottom, and the hand placing the lids. This cow was sponsored by Ben and Jerry's . Next to her we have The Laughing Cow, with earrings that look like the Laughing Cow cheese you buy at H.E.B.. The cow covered in spoons was my favorite. The effect of all those convex mirrored surfaces was cool. The Cow Milk Delivery is right in front of the old opera house.


These are all part of the Cow Parade, http://www.cowparade.com , politely called Vach'Art in Paris.

Never a dull moment

On Saturday, we went in search of a new jacket for Sarah. Well, we never found the jacket, but take a look at everything else we stumbled upon walking around Paris in the spring. A cow dressed in a flamenco dress (they are all over town : http://paris.cowparade.com), a mime dressed as the devil, a group of mongolian chanters, and a hippie playing an aboriginal digeridoo.

We also had some dang good tiramisu gelato along the way, and finished with a pint at the scottish pub. Somehow that helped lessen the anguish of not finding a jacket. Clothing stores in Paris just ain't working for us. Everything resembles the "Juniors" section of Dillards, only weirder and 3 times the price. Lovely.

We also went to the Bastille market this week. Yum. Fresh roasted chicken, fresh made chevre and thyme ravioli, lettuce that looks like it was picked 10 minutes ago, deep red strawberries, and monstrous gargantuan eggs. Both of the mombo eggs we've opened have had double yolks. I've never seen that before. Love the market.

Today was another French holiday, May is filled with them. This one was a war related one. Today we went on a guided walking tour of the Medieval Latin quarter. We learned about a woman posioning her family, how the Latin quarter evolved, how students rose at 4am, and studied/prayed until 8pm, saw Mitterand's house, and learned some of the finer points of personal hygiene during Roman times in Paris.

The Expat Dilemma

While we've been here, we've met some really nice expats. For one reason or another, we've all found ourselves living in Paris. Some through HRC, some are friends of friends, others through expat groups. There are over 100,000 native English speakers living in Paris.

Saturday we went to an expat picnic in the park, we had a good time, even with the weather turned chilly. About 75 people turned out. I guess that's why this is on my mind...

The dilemma is this. While we cherish our French friends, the conversation comes with a tax. If we are speaking in French, I have the vocabulary of a three year old. If we speak in English, I'm monitoring myself to not use weird American lingo, and to use more periods than commas in my speech.

We have friends that made a decision to move over here, not just for a few years. They moved with the mindset of blending in, and not having the dreadful end-date that creeps up on you. They haven't gone the expat route because they wanted exclusively French friends. In fact, we are their only native English speaking friends.

But what French experience are we missing out on when we hang out with the expat crowd? I'm not sure, but I think we'd socialize less if we didn't have our expat friends. There is something interesting about the expats here. And since we started over here with no social network, going the expat route was fairly easy.

I guess after writing this it's not so much a dilemma. Just something I was thinking about.

Library to die for

This is the library at Fontainebleau, a chateau about 40 minutes SE outside Paris. This is another royal pad that everybody had to add their touch to. It was built by Francois I, who loved Italian style. He imported all the artisans from Italy to work on this place, and it shows. Lots of frescos and sculpture everywhere. Lots of heavy woodwork everywhere as well, and decorated ceilings reminded me a little of Spain.

Napolean I and Napoleon III also took their turn at "decorating drama" here. I still find it hard to believe how Napoleon I lived and looked every bit like the the King that the French had just beheaded. We walked through the room where Napoleon I abdicated before he was shipped off to Elba.

Check out more pics at:
http://suzyinparis.free.fr

We also went hiking for a few hours in the huge royal forest that surrounds the town. The overpowering greenness of all the trees leafing out reminded us both of hiking in Vermont. Unfortunately it was spitting rain at us during the hike, so the camera stayed stowed. Not a beefy Texas thunderstorm, but a nice gentle French pitter-patter.

We'll definitely be back for more hiking, it's great to have good hiking 40 minutes away.

Thanks, you were sooo helpful

So yesterday we took a day trip to see the chateau in Fontainebleau. We took an RER train from Gare de Lyon. The ticket situation was a little bizarre. Every single one of the automated ticket machines was for SNCF trains only (France's Nat'l rail lines), and there were close to 10 ticket windows open for purchasing SNCF tickets. But the train to Fontainebleau was RER (regional train). There was only one ticket line for RER trains, and it was very long. We missed our intended train, so had to wait for the next one. I'll spare you further details, but let's say it was confusing, and Sarah and I needed help. We asked at the information booth, which was indeed very helpful, but I did find it ironic that this huge fire breathing dragon was hanging directly over the information booth. Was it to scare off potential questions?