Thrashing in Austin

We arrived in Austin at 2am Saturday morning, after a lovely delay in Chicago. Is it mandatory that all flights out of Chicago be delayed? We're easing our re-entry shock with chips, salsa, and nice margaritas. We're also trying to save the American economy by buying 2 cars and a new dishwasher. This afternoon we make a trip to look at carpet. I am shopped out!

We're sleeping on the floor, and cursing our hazy memories (I thought we left some cooking stuff in Austin...). We're still a bit grumpy from the trip, and facing a parade of workers ( A/C service, garage door fixer, dishwasher installer....).

I want my wonderful simple life in Paris back. No cars to fuss with, no weekend house projects.

Suzy and Sarah's life of crime......or just efficient recycling

We're in the final stretch, as I write this I am surrounded by fragrant
French movers packing up the apartment. They've been packing since 8am (it's
now 3pm), and haven't gotten to the rather large amount of glasspacks that
need to happen in the kitchen. There is something very unsettling about 4
strange men handling your stuff. We've definitely got the 'B' team, since
everyone (including regular movers) is on vacation. It took two of the
movers over 90 minutes to pack the futon. Is packing a futon really 3 person
hours of work for people who are professional movers? Hmmmmm......


One of our weekend activities was rather nerve wracking. We have been unable
to find someone to take the kitchen cabinets. So at 5am on Sunday morning,
we snuck downstairs, and ..... left them in a discrete place around the
corner on the sidewalk. We actually see this happen a lot in Paris, and we
couldn't figure out another solution. Everyone is gone in August, including
people that collect donations. By noon, over half of the cabinets were gone
from the sidewalk. By 8:30 Monday morning, everything was gone. I'm not sure
if someone took the last bits, or if the garbage guy tossed them in the
truck. So are we criminals, or efficient recyclers?


We spent the weekend thrashing in the apartment, taking down window
coverings and hardware, taking down cabinets, trying to figure out how to get
scratches out of the beautiful 100 year old wood floor, sorting out what was
going on the airplane from what would go in the sea shipment, wondering when
our wire transfer will happen to the Austin account, throwing out all our
food/vitamins/meds, taking down all the pictures and carfully extracting
all the picture hangers, patching all the holes from picture hanger, trying
unsuccessfully to get the balcony door to stop sticking (French window
hardware is weird), fussing over a funny sound the toilet was making,
delivering the last of the appliances to the buyer, making trip after trip
after trip to the garbage can, and cleaning all the windows again. There is
a *HUGE* apartment deposit, we're channeling our angst and worry about
getting it back into cleaning in preparation for the inspection.


Suzy also spent Sunday in meltdown mode. We are hitting a lot of "this is
the last time that we will XYZ in Paris" moments. On Sunday, each moment
turned Suzy into a soppy crying mess. Get over it, girlfriend!

Mission Accomplished

We are trying to solve the dependency puzzle here as best we can.

We have to take the blinds down before the ladder disappears into the sea container. We have to backup the computer before the air shipment goes. We have to before event X happens.

Which brings me to another piece of the dependency puzzle: Suzy has to post her "Mission Accomplished" photo summary before the computer with Picasa on it gets packed.

So here they are. 80 pics from our two years here. A few of them only hold value for Sarah and I (the scrappy little dog lives next door).

I have quite a few nice memories wrapped up in these. My brain now has a moveable feast to feed on for the rest of my life.

http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/MissionAccomplished

Velib hits the streets

Paris has done it again. As if 293 Metro stations weren't enough.

Paris has started a bicycle rental system called Velib. For a Euro or two, you can rent a nice shiny new bike and toodle around for a bit. There are 20,000 bikes scattered around the city, and 750 check out stations like the one in the picture. They are *everywhere*. For a yearly subscription of 29 euros, you can grab a bike whenever you want, the first 30 minutes are free. It has noticeably increased the amount of bicycle traffic on the street. They have trucks that run around and re-distribute bicycles, so that you should always be able to find a bicycle (or an empty slot to check one in).

Score one more for Paris in the "We mock you with all our public transportation" catagory.

Byebye orchid

We are giving our orchid to a friend. I had to have a picture of it before it went, it's positively overflowing in blooms right now. Byebye orchid.


We escaped for a few hours this weekend and went to the expats picnic in Parc Monceau. It was nice to take a break from all the moving goop.

French Appliances, anyone?

Today I finally got around to doing pics for selling our Fridge and Stove. I'm a bit worried about a buyer getting the fridge out of the building. They are about to start work on the lift, and it might not be finished by when we depart. Did I mention we are on the 5th floor? Dragging a fridge down 5 flights of a circular staircase doesn't sound like fun.

Details on the appliances at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics2/Appliances

Bastille Day flyover

I realized that I had forgotten to blog my Bastille Day flyover pic. These guys with the blue-white-red exhaust came over first, followed by group after group of every type of plane the French army has. It thunders right over our apartment, this pic was taken from the quai right by Pont Sully.

Bittersweet

I'm facing reality, and I'm not so sure I like it.

For 6 months, there has been a little nagging voice whispering " You have to return to the US". For 6 months I've done a pretty good job of ignoring the Voice, and focusing on enjoying our time here. I'm now having to face up to reality. Next week movers are coming to do estimates, we're been selling off appliances, getting letters together to break the lease and utilities, futzing with US Customs inventory, dividing belongings between air shipment /sea shipment / hand carry, ....etc,etc,etc.

The extra fun thing about moving out of a Paris apartment is that you have to make a *huge* deposit to get an apartment, and now we have the big showdown inspection to try and get it back. Expat after expat tells me their horror story about suddenly missing $3000 from their deposit, getting retroactive rent increases after they leave the country and having $$ wired out of their French account, getting charged $1000 for a missing key, and on and on and on.


We still have a few weeks here, but I know from the move over here that the wheels come off the wagon pretty soon, and you just have to surrender to The Process. Things are a little whacky already because at work I'm also starting a totally new job that will definitely be challenging. It's time to hunker down.

I am looking forward to seeing friends, and a nice plate of TexMex, but this place really has charmed the socks off me. I never really got past that "pinch me, I live in Paris" feeling as I walk down the streets.


Now whenever I am out I wonder if this will be the last time we:

• Wait in line for the worlds best Falafel


• Stroll down rue des Rosiers


• Watch 3 year olds build sand castles in Place des Vosges


• Eat at a sidewalk table at The Lounge


• Go to Paris Plages


• Go to the Louvre on Wednesday nights


• Eat Magret de Canard at Au Gamin de Paris


• Hear the SNCF jingle in the train station


• Walk along the quai on Ile St. Louis

Birthday Extravaganza!!

I've been having trouble getting my photos together from our last big trip. I tend to put off blogging about a trip until the photos are organized and posted to picasaweb.

We took an amazing trip in June for *two* weeks to northern Italy and southeastern France. The trip was also Sarah's birthday present. She said she wanted to be hiking on her birthday. So I planned and planned, and optimized the plan, reworked the plan, added to the plan, and finally we were able to go. The best pics on this trip are Cinque Terre and Chamonix.

We started in Milan, not because we were dying to see Milan, but because that's where I could get decently priced Easyjet tickets. We had a low key day there, we toured the cathedral, walked around the city, and not much else.


A few Milan pics at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/Milan

Then we took the train down to Cinque Terre. It's a National park on the Italian seashore consisting of 5 tiny villages built on cliffs over the water, with the area crisscrossed by hiking paths. It's where pesto was invented, and the food was very nice. We had a great room in Riomaggiore, with a sea view terrace with a dead on view of the town's little port. The first day we hiked waaay up to a small church with a huge panoramic view over the coast. The hard part was actually the descent, huge steps down and down and down. Unending steps. Both of us had quivering legs by the time we reached the bottom (we were also hurrying because we were hungry). I spent one day doing nothing but watching the ocean and hanging out on the terrace. The last day there we did the classic Cinque Terre hike, where you hike between all 5 villages. We refueled on some of the the best pizza I've ever had in Vernazza (pesto pizza). One night I also tried fresh lemon marionated anchovies, really incredible. The only downside to Cinque Terre is how many college age Americans were there. It has lost much of its Italian charm compared to our first visit to Cinque Terre 11 years ago.

Cinque Terre pics at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/CinqueTerre

After filling up on pesto and fresh fish, we took the train to Aosta, an area in the Piedmont. Aosta is off the tourist track, and it's close to what I really wanted to see, Etroubles. Etroubles is the tiny tiny French speaking Italian village in the St. Bernard pass where my great grandfather was born. We stayed down the hill in Aosta, and unfortunately Sarah didn't do much else. She got a stomach virus of some sort. So I went to Etroubles on a rainy day and checked it out. I had an amazing lunch there. The specialty in the region is meats grilled on hot stone. So I had pork loin, pork chop. chicken, beef steak, sweet spicy sausage, and grilled veggies all on a hot stone. It took a while, but I ate the entire thing, it was really good. I wandered around the town taking pictures as it drizzled. It was deserted because it's between skiing and hiking season. It was the first time in my life I've seen my last name on a street, a memorial, and a wagon. Etroubles is also on the "Via Romea Francigena", a 10th century pilgrimage route from France to Rome. It is also the pass that Napolean took when he led the Italian Army to kick the Austrians out of Italy. The region also has castles dotted on top of hills, we saw a bunch on the bus ride to Chamonix.

A few Valle d'Aosta pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/ValleDAosta

We next hit Chamonix Mont Blanc, and settled into our nice Interhome apartment for a week. Sarah was feeling better, but still not 100% after the stomach flu, so we eased into the hiking. By far our favorite hike was Lac Blanc. We took the ski lift part way up, and then hiked across beautiful spring flower encrusted green tundra to a slushy lake. Fantastic views back across the valley of snow capped mountains and glaciers pushing down the mountain. It was an amazing experience. We really enjoyed the town, it was cheaper than Zermatt, was 'familiar' French, and it was early season which meant not a lot of people.

Chamonix pics at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/Chamonix

Our last stop was Annecy. It's on a *HUGE* crystal clear lake. We spent a half day cycling around the lake. We had crepes in a memorable setting that night, warm summer day sitting outside on a stone patio by a cute fountain, listening to a harp player.

Annecy pics at
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/Annecy

Roland Garros

I'm not a big sports fan. But I decided that with the French Open happening in my own back yard, I should go see it. Our Austin friends, Charice and Amy, were in town visiting, so the four of us spent the day at Roland Garros. Sarah can give you the long story about the painful long wait to get tickets a few weeks ago. I can't portray her suffering adequately.

We arrived to an unruly mob outside the gates, but it moved quickly. We had great seats on court 1. Court 1 is smaller than the two big courts, but still has assigned seating.

I've never seen a live tennis match, and I usually have trouble staying interested in matches on TV, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

It was a blast. You really get a sense of the two players going after each other when you are there live, and it's much easier to get into the game. We watched one game that was especially good, Monfils vs Rochus. Monfils just had a blistering serve. One of his serves was 215kph (135mph).

I also had a lot of fun watching the ballboys/ballgirls work their tails off, and my jaw dropped being around so much high priced camera equipment.

The obligitory pics are at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/RolandGarros

Bastille Sunday Market

A few weeks ago I did the dirty deed and photographed the Sunday Bastille Market. I say "dirty deed" because the market is becoming quite the tourist attraction. While tourists tend to increase the crowd and add to the frustration of people buying food, the tourists don't buy much. The crowds of the market can be a bit overwhelming, people with 30 years experience are pretty good at throwing an elbow when needed. There are several hundred booths, and it is a foodies delight.

I'll let the pictures do the talking....
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/BastilleSundayMarket

Provence, Take 2

We zipped down to Avignon last week. Our neighbors from Austin were visiting us in Paris. I knew they'd love the Chef's hosted dinner at La Mirande, so we all made a short getaway to Avignon.

While the dinner was great, and the place we stayed was a treat, Sarah and I did have our plans ruffled by a French public holiday. We had planned a hike along a grand randonee (national French hiking trail) out in the country. Our first plan starting from Pont du Gard was bust because the bus schedule evaporates on public holidays. A very kind lady at the Avignon TI helped us formulate a new plan of hiking starting from St. Remy, and found a bus schedule that worked. That plan was nuked because the bus never showed up. ...sigh.... So we had to settle for a much shorter walk, but found a killer pizza joint along the river. I found the lavender in this picture blooming, and managed to get a nice shot of it with the famous Avignon bridge behind it.

Dinner in the restored kitchen of La Mirande included: Pan fried Sardine with creamed artichoke, oven baked halibut with white asparagus in a divine red wine and shallot cream sauce, confit du canard with mashed potatoes and baked cherry tomatoes, strawberries in citrus juice with honey, saffon, and baby basil. I sat right next to the chef this time, enjoyed it immensely. He's very 'unfussy', and has a great sense of humor. He let me taste the rasberry vinegar, and showed me his favorite olive oil. Believe it or not, he adds olive oil to his mashed potatoes. We had a very enjoyable red (Chateau Paradis Terre des Anges).

The next day we went to Arles for a quick trip. I wish we had more time there, and I wish I had my other camera. Arles looked like a fun place to take photos.

Photos at....
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/Provence2

Vienna, at last

I keep putting off a post on our trip to Vienna. Part of that is because I've been sick, and part of it is because we had so much fun in Vienna, I wanted to take some time to blog it. I'm feeling better now, so I wanted to get some memories down before they all seep out of my head.

We were able to spend a full week in Vienna, and we timed our visit just right. We had beautiful brilliant early Spring sunny days. We snagged a nice Interhome appartment week long rental right in the heart of downtown.

Vienna was the eastern most outpost of western European civilization, and the ruling seat of the Hapsburg Dynasty for a loooong time. Every Hapsburg king and queen seems to have built their own palace in Vienna, so the city is filled with interesting architecture, and nice gardens. Since we had a week there, we spent plenty of time hanging out in the gardens. We also got in the habit of going to coffeehouses in the afternoon, which is a popular thing to do. Suzy got in the habit of having a slower pulse. :-)

We saw/visited/ate:

• Belvedere Palace and Klimt's glittery gold "The Embrace", and Schiele's depressing "The Family". I really enjoyed both of these artists


• Hapsburg royal jewels. It was interesting to see the Turkish influence in things.


• Natural History museum - Oddly thorough bird and mineral collections, spooky taxidermy collection. The bird collection went on for room after room after room.


• Standing room at Opera. For 2 euros, you don't expect to see much. Very entertaining guard trying to "run herd" on crowd.


• Schoss Schonbrunn. Interesting, but we've done a lot of palace/chateau tours, and this one was especially packed and especially expensive. We enjoyed hanging out in the gardens the most.


• Tofen strudel, Apple Strudel, Sacher torte. Yum.


• Numerous beers - Trumer Pils was my favorite


• Curry Bratwurst with spicy sweet mustard


• To counteract the Bratwurst, beer and desserts: Smoked tofu, fish in papier, Grilled goatcheese with Quinoa, Apple/Carrot/Ginger juice


• Best Falafel Sandwiches *ever*


• Best and most expensive California roll ever: cooked solid crab, avocat, masago, ginger, spicy mayo dressing, greens


• Lippizzaner stallion practise session. This rocked. 4 sessions of 6 horses each working on training and steps, with huge chandeliers overhead, and Strauss waltzes playing.


• Kunsthistoriches Art museum - beautiful museum (leftover palace) with nice compact collection. 3 Rembrandt self portraits were nice, numerous Reubens, and a nice Vermeer


• Exhibit of Ivory Carving from Hapsburg collection. I'm not a big ivory fan because of the poor elephant. But this exhibit was really amazing, they really can carve some wild things using ivory as the medium. Check out my pictures to see what I mean.


• Palace furniture museum. The Hapsburgs had so many palaces, and their furniture traveled with them when they moved palaces. So when the Hapsburg Dynasty fell over, they eventually made their furniture warehouse into a museum.

There are still plenty of things we didn't do, which of course means Vienna goes on our lengthy list of places we'd like to return to some day.

Pictures are at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/Vienna

Bratislava

We just got back from a week in Vienna and a short nip over to Bratislava, Slovakia.

Bratislava is a really bizarre place. It's a broad mixture of many different things. Elegance from the 1800 Hapsburg dynasty royalty, cute domed church towers, funky crumbling Art Nouveau, 40 years of Soviet rule (including lots of blocky concrete), sad little public transportation trolleys, and a gussied up downtown pedestrian area where there are trendy bars and restaurants. Throw in a _completely_ unrecognizable language (hello, 10 cents will buy you a vowel), fantastic cheap beer, nice hiking close by, and that's Bratislava.

Of course, you are still wondering about the bizarre picture here. That was our hotel. I kid you not. We weren't to thrilled by it, it was run by supplement popping hippies pretending to be artists (mind the paint and brushes on the breakfast table). The inside of the room was..uhhh...somewhat lacking in cleanliness. We've stayed in plenty of dumps before, that can be part of the fun sometimes. But this one was a bit too creepy, and the breakfast bar was just icky.

Bratislava was interesting, watching the city shake off the effects of communism in downtown. But you also have a nice view of identical rows of huge monolithic apartment buildings out in the burbs built during communist rule. And we found ourselves a bit frustrated by the public transit, the machines selling tickets *only* took coins, but no one would give you change. We poked around the town the first day, and went hiking the second day.

Pics at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/Bratislava

Devotion vs Temptation in Cologne

We zipped on the Thalys high speed train to Cologne last weekend. As an American, it's easier to fit into German culture than French culture. Germans dress down a little, aren't babuzzled by our big American smiles, and don't have the small formalities that the French have in everyday life. Don't get me wrong, we've both fallen head over heels for France. We'll be lifetime francophiles, but it is still fun to bop over to Germany.

Cologne is great for a short trip. We started Saturday morning with a tour of the monstrous cathedral. The cathedral was built in spurts over several hundred years, but they did a decent job of keeping a consistent look. I had trouble picking a picture of it for the blog, I wanted something with people in the foreground, because you need that to grasp the scale of this beast. I was shocked at how grungy the poor thing was, I guess I'm spoiled by the freshly cleaned Notre Dame down the street at home. I'm wondering if they should take a bold new approach and just spray paint it black, it really is that dark.

The inside of the cathedral has some interesting points. I was struck by the difference in the middle aged stained glass, and the pieces added in the late 1800s. Stained glass was like television for peasants. Because they could not read, glass told the story of Christ. The middle aged glass was black and white TV, and the glass from the 1800s was HDTV. Because I've done some stained glass work, the contrast was interesting to me.


They also have a famous crucifix from before 1000 a.d. It's much less gory and bloody than ones from 1200-1600, when people were really getting into feeling the suffering of the whole thing. I highly recommend the tour, it definitely brought out some interesting points.

So if that's the Devotion part, the Temptation part manifests itself in the chocolate museum and in numerous Kolsch beers throughout the weekend. The chocolate museum was fun, but packed. I enjoyed watching the truffle line the best. We also enjoyed really good indian food, probably the best I've ever had. Shrimp masala, Chicken curry, and really spicy Sag Paneer.

The main painting museum had *very* nice pointillism collection, and I also attempted without success to enjoy the modern art museum (check out one of the modern "art" installations on my photo page).

Just a few pics...
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/Cologne

Spring!

Spring has sprung in Paris! This weekend Spring made its first appearance in Paris this year. There really is something special about springtime here. Everybody packs the streets, and enjoys the good weather. The picture at the bottom is the quai on Sunday, it is closed to motorized traffic every Sunday. Today it was packed. Sarah and I sat on the edge of the river for a while, soaking up sunshine and springtime happiness. Both Saturday and Sunday we had lunch guests, but we did manage to get out both days for a nice walk. Saturday's walk came with an added bonus, Suzy snagged a boules set for playing petanque. It's a game popular with older men in Europe in the park.

I snapped a pic in this bakery window, they really are "workin" the patissiere artistry. The bakery (Miss Manon) isn't one that I shop at, it's all flash and no substance. But I have to admit, they have a dang good window display.


Sarah and I are continuing our Wednesday night trips to the Louve. The last two weeks we visited portions of the Egyptian collection. A few more weeks, and we *might* be finished with one of the floors. I keep a master map, and mark off sections that we do each week.

We also have been going to Wednesday dinner on rue St. Anne, home to a ton of Japanese restaurants. We've been working our way down the street, trying places. We found a winner last Wednesday. Suzy found some cold soba noodles that she likes. Fresh noodles, and a much more reasonable price than Zen's over in the 5th.

Next weekend we're off to Cologne. Under 4 hours by Thalys train.

Dinner in Lyon

Last weekend we made a trip to Lyon. It's a quick 2 hour TGV ride, and it was a nice weekend getaway.

Lyon is France's gastronomic capitol. Quite a feat, considering the elevated standard of food in France to begin with. So the main point of our visit was to go have a really good meal. We were not disappointed.

We ate at Leon de Lyon. I mainly chose it because I wanted a place where we could do a set menu of courses, and the set menu here appealed to us. It's a Michelin two star, but it gets 4 Michelin forks. Stars rate service, how nice the setting is, is the bathroom nice, etc. Forks rates the food, so I tend to pay more attention to that.

We had the sommelier chose a wine from the Rhone valley (close to Lyon), and it was a very nice Syrah based wine. It was a Saint Joseph AOC, Domain de Yves Cuilleron 2000 l'Amarybelle. The Lyon wine shop said we wouldn't be able to find that year for sale in a shop, perhaps Leon de Lyon hoovered it all up.

Here is the menu:
Two courses of Amuse Bouche (chef's complementary appetizers) , some wonton bits and veloute of celery.

Scallops and Langoustines (like a saltwater crayfish) in a frothy cream sauce tasting like a shrimp bisque.

Half a lobster in winter vegetables and a clear broth.

Chicken Bresse - My fav. Slow cooked chicken with black truffle slices inserted under the skin, served with a cream foie gras sauce, and topped off with ground black truffle. It was truly amazing. Served with a vegetable terrine.

Cheese course - Two men carry a huge cheese tray sagging under the weight of roughly 15-20 different cheeses, and you pick a few to try. Gooey nutty cheeses to a nice grainy Compte. Drool.

Pre-dessert course - petit fours, and a dish of chocolate truffles.

Dessert - Nougat ice cream, crunchy-chewy vanilla macaroons, on a bed of cooked figs.

We enjoyed 3 hours of eating, and very good service, and the unfortunate ending of paying a large bill. You literally have to prepare for a meal like this by watching what you eat for the preceding two days, making sure you keep things light and simple so that your system can handle unending food for 3 hours.


Check out the video in the lower right of this page:

http://www.leondelyon.com/uk/navigation.htm

Lyon is also the home to the french puppet Guignol, and so we enjoyed some Guignol sights as well, including a really funky museum of Guignol. A few pics (too busy eating to take pictures this trip):

http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics2

Cineaqua

Last weekend we went to the new aquarium that opened in Paris last spring. I'm a big aquarium fan, and try to visit them when we travel (especially now that I don't have my own tank set up at home).

We put this one off for a while, mainly because of the price. It's *outrageous*, even by Paris standards. 19.50 euros *each*!! We finally broke down and paid the inflated entry, and really enjoyed it.

My new spy camera has an "aquarium" mode, which worked pretty well. I had fun taking fishy pics.

While I've been to a better aquarium (Lisbon's aquarium just kicks butt), this one had it's own interesting flair. One room had a music stage in front of the 20 foot x 20 foot glass (or probably acrylic) panel with fishies swimming behind it. They arrange live music on Sunday afternoons, and had a decent band playing Cuban music. We settled into lounge chairs, grabbed some beers from the bar, and listened to music while watching fishies swim. It was quite nice.

We're off to Lyon this weekend, in search of gastronomic adventures.

Art Nouveau in Nancy

We traveled last weekend to Nancy, France. It is a 3 hour train ride east of Paris.

Nancy is where Art Nouveau started at the turn of the 20th century. Sarah and I are both big Art Nouveau fans, so we enjoyed it a lot. The city provides a map with all the Art Nouveau architecture on it. We walked and walked looking at different buildings. It was really cool because there were a lot of houses with interesting Art Nouveau detail on them that weren't by a famous architect. This made the whole town fun to walk through.

I've posted some pictures, but I want to caution you. If you aren't an avid architecture fan, you might have trouble wading through them.

http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics2/Nancy

We also ate at a famous brassiere, Brassiere D'Excelsior. There is a picture posted at picasaweb that shows the ornate interior. I had some nice profiteroles. Profiteroles are vanilla ice cream filled pastry puffs smothered in warm dark chocolate sauce. This place brought a gravy boat of chocolate sauce to the table and smothered them after serving them. Yum!

Japonaise Ceramiques

Last weekend we went to the French National Ceramique Museum in Sevres on the outskirts of Paris.

It was on the grounds of the famous Sevres Ceramique Manufactoring plant, which was founded by Louis XV to make fancy smancy pottery for the French Aristocracy. They were having an exhibit of contemporary Japanese pottery, and it included some really wild stuff. It was a good exhibit.

We also went thru their pottery from 1800's, some of the Napolean III era stuff that I've recently taken a liking to. They also had a bunch of Art Nouveau vases that just swept me away.

This brings me to our weekend plans for tomorrow.... After looking at Art Nouveau pottery that was Fancy Smancy, we decided to travel to Nancy. Nancy is a big Art Nouveau center, so we're going to check it out.

Mont Saint Michel

We took a quick weekend trip to Mont Saint Michel on the coast of Normandy. It has been an abbey since the 900s. After the French Revolution, religion was "out", and Mont Saint Michel was a prison for many years. It was built on a granite island out in the middle of the bay. They have *really* strong tides here, the whole bay is a muddy mucky mess at low tide, and then surges in as the tide rises. It is low tide for some of my pictures, and high tide at others.

In the 1860s they built a causeway out to the island so you can reach it without going through the mud. The causeway caused a lot of the bay to silt up, they have just broken ground on a project to build a bridge out to the island, and get rid of the causeway. The project looks rather involved (finishing in 2012) , I'm glad we got to see le Mont before construction cranes descended on it.

The island itself is....well.... a tourist trap. A very nice one, but definitely a tourist trap. Packs of tour buses descend on the place during the day. Sunday was especially packed because it was the first Sunday of the month, and entrance to the abbey was free. Numerous museums and monuments are free (and crowded) on the first Sunday of the month in France.

The abbey was fairly interesting. You could see the numbers on the stones in the terrace, stone masons got paid by the number of stones. After the floor was laid, stone mason #8 would get paid based on the number of stones with '8' in them in the floor. Some interesting architecture, some of the gothic arches made for fun photos. When it was used as a prison, they installed a huge human hamster wheel. The prisoner power from the wheel was used to drag supplies up a steep slope into the abbey.

We were staying overnight, which ended up being a really good thing. It meant that we had the place to ourselves after the day trippers left. It was magical at night and in the morning. We walked along the fortified wall around the island, and walked out on the causeway a bit so we could see the abbey lit up.

Mont Saint Michel pics are at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics2/MontStMichel

Soup kitchen battle in Nice

France is having its own immigration issues, and a lot of the immigrants are Muslim. There is a private organization in Nice that isn't happy about the immigrants, and they seem to be focused on the Muslim immigrants. They have an interesting way of fighting the immigration of Muslims into France.

The anti-Muslim group serves free soup to the homeless in Nice. The kicker is that they only serve pork based soup (Muslims can't eat pork). A pro-Muslim soup kitchen group started distributing non-Pork based soup across the street. Lots of soup on the streets of Nice.

The French government cracked down on the Pork soup scheme, calling it discrimination against Muslims on public property. So the anti-Muslim group is looking for private property to serve their Pork based soup from, and they are protesting the French government crackdown. (Everyone loves a good protest in France)

While I don't agree with their issue of being against immigrants, I found the battle of the soup kitchens to be an interesting story.

We're off to Mont St Michel this weekend. Travel Travel Travel.

Marche aux Puces

This weekend we went to the monster Paris Flea Market. A little different than the vision that springs into my head when I hear the words "Flea Market". The place was overflowing with really nice antiques, and an aweful lot of it was *way* out of our price range. We asked about an Art Deco tea set, it was only 1400 euros, and didn't include cups and saucers. The candlesticks we liked were 425 euros. Ouch. They had a lot of Art Deco and Art Nouveau pieces, which we really like. So I imagine we'll be going back to look again sometime. Different stored specialized in different things, one place specialized in Art Deco ceiling lights, another in Art Nouveau fireplace surrounds.

We did manage to buy one thing, a candelabra. It holds 5 candles, and has a slightly curvy Art Nouveau look to it. The silver plating isn't in perfect condition, but we dined by candlelight tonight, and really liked it.

Wednesday nights at the Louvre

Sarah and I are trying to start a new routine for Wednesday nights. I thought that if I posted it in my blog, there would be a slightly better chance that we'd stick with it.

We got a year pass for the Louvre, and so we are going to try to go every Wednesday night to do a small bit of it. The Louvre has over 35,000 objects in its collections, and I hope this way we can see more of it without getting overwhelmed.

To get an idea of the scale of how big the Louvre is, check out this PDF of it:

http://www.louvre.fr/media/repository/ressources/sources/pdf/src_document_50760_v2_m56577569830634872.pdf

Last night we did 4 rooms of the Levant collection, mainly from Syria and Cyprus. They were from 2000 to 1000 B.C. Definitely built to last.

Amsterdam

Sarah and I enjoyed a long weekend in Amsterdam last weekend. I didn't do a lot of photography, we spent most of our time in museums and walking the canals.

We got museum passes, which worked out really well. Museums in Amsterdam aren't cheap (most were roughly 10 euros).

We arrived the day after a freak windstorm swept northern Europe, in fact our high speed train wasn't so high speed because of the weather.

We enjoyed the food a lot, there seem to be numerous vegetarien options, it reminded us of some of the veggie places in Austin.

I've posted some photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/Amsterdam

And here is a list of the places we visited:

• Anne Frank house
  
• Rijksmuseum - awesome Rembrant paintings
  
• Heineken brewery tour
  
• Canal boat ride
  
• Van Gogh museum
  
• Amsterdam history museum
  
• Hermitage museum
  
• Rembrandt's House
  
• Horticulture garden
  

I think I enjoyed the Van Gogh museum the most. Van Gogh only painted for 10 years, and the museum was able to cover those 10 years in amazing detail. It was interested to follow the different techniques he used as he befriended other artists, and also see how his painting style changed over time.

The tour of Rembrandt's house was cool because we got an in depth demonstration of his etching techniques. That really made the etching collection they have come alive. They were able to recreate his house very accurately because Rembrandt went bankrupt while he owned it, and thus everything he owned was cataloged and sold at auction.

The Hermitage was the biggest disappointment, they have just opened the Amsterdam "branch", I was hoping to see some of the biggies from St. Petersburg Hermitage, but they really didn't have much at all.

Avignon Pics

I've posted some Avignon pics:

http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/Avignon2007

Dinner in Avignon

We had a great weekend in Avignon. We bopped down on an early TGV Saturday, enjoyed two days of nice sunshine, and crawled back to Paris on Sunday night. It was a great break away from the winter grey.

We took a nice walk along the Rhone river, toured the Papal palace, and took a side trip to Orange to see the Roman Theater. The pope bailed on Rome in the 1300's and took up residence in Avignon for a bit. A nice papal fortress was built, which was totally ransacked in the French Revolution. So there isn't much detail left to see inside. The theater in Orange was built in the first century A.D., and is the only roman theater in Europe that still has its back wall standing.

I think the best part was our dinner Saturday night at La Mirande. It's a Michelin 1 star in a boutique hotel next to the Papal palace.

We signed up for "Table d'hote" (hosted table). The hotel has a restored 19th century kitchen in the basement with a monstrous wood fired stove. You get to eat in the kitchen, and watch the chef cook each course. There were 11 of us including the hotel owner. It was a fun group, which was good, because you are thrust into sharing a dinner table with everyone. The picture here is Jean-Claude starting on dinner while we were all enjoying our before dinner drink.

We enjoyed three different wines, two light whites, and a suprisingly nice red with the duck course. After dinner Sarah and I both indulged in very expensive after dinner drinks (mine was a 1979 armagnac).


Our 5 course dinner was amazing:

• Pan fried Fois gras set in cream of artichoke soup


• Monstrous shrimp (largest I've ever seen in my life) and sea scallops in a mushroom and leek creme sauce


• Roast duck (roasted 5 hours) in a fabulous red wine and duck liver sauce with small blob of mashed potatoes and a whole roasted shallot


• Mont d'Or Vacherin baked cheese


• Pan fried pineapple slice with apple and grapefruit sauces with orange sorbet.

Have I sold out?

Sarah and I did our first trip to Europe 10 years ago. We pinched and squeezed, staying at the dregs of the listings in Rick Steve's 1996 Best of Europe. Shared bathrooms, anonymous hairs, paper thin walls. One place we had to put coins in the shower to get hot water.

Over the years, I sometimes think we've sold out. Rick's listings now include some nice splurges, and we've started sliding towards them. Case in point, this weekend. We're taking a much needed distraction, escaping the Paris rain, and popping down to Avignon for the weekend. We're staying at a nice hotel with a Michelin 1 star restaurant, and we have reservations for a special dining experience across town at another Michelin 1 star. It's a dinner where the chef is supposed to join you for dinner. I'm not sure how that works, but it is bound to be interesting.

We've still had awesome experiences at some well priced places. For instance, an awesome time at a cheeeeap place in Berlin. But we've also had some experiences that are not "Rick Steves" type, for instance, Hotel Negresco in Nice.

If you are wondering who Rick Steves is, he's the god of budget European travel. www.ricksteves.com .

So Long, Farewell.....

Two of our closest Paris friends (Beth and Vivianne) left to move back to Sydney yesterday. We will miss them dearly. They were wildly entertaining, and we could always count on having a great time when they were involved. I caught a massive cold (probably on the flight back from Texas), so I had to miss our goodbye dinner with them.

So au revoir, Beth and Vivianne. We will miss our endless bottles of Champagne, death creatures, blogging novel titles, Paris mexican food, pears and roquefort, screaming at World cup finals, The Green Fairy, Jardin des plantes, Vivianne's mexican cuisine, hangovers, the Festival of Vivianne, and long stories about Australia.

The expat experience can be like this. You can meet other really interesting expats, and you easily bond over your shared experience of temporarily living in a foreign land. And then you part and go your separate ways.