Parisien

Thrashing in Austin

2007-08-22T20:30:00.000+02:00

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

2007-08-13T18:32:00.000+02:00

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

2007-08-04T20:18:00.000+02:00

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

2007-08-01T21:03:00.000+02:00

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

2007-07-28T16:02:00.000+02:00

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?

2007-07-22T21:12:00.000+02:00

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

2007-07-22T21:05:00.000+02:00

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

2007-07-21T16:16:00.000+02:00

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!!

2007-07-09T21:46:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-03T17:22:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-13T19:59:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-13T17:13:00.000+02:00

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

2007-04-29T22:25:00.000+02:00

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

2007-04-10T20:59:00.000+02:00

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

2007-03-25T13:55:00.000+02:00

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!

2007-03-11T18:18:00.000+01:00

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

2007-03-09T11:04:00.000+01:00

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

2007-03-01T20:57:00.000+01:00

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

2007-02-20T21:35:00.000+01:00

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

2007-02-15T22:30:00.000+01:00

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

2007-02-07T20:53:00.000+01:00

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

2007-02-03T06:50:00.000+01:00

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

2007-01-29T21:40:00.000+01:00

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

2007-01-25T08:36:00.000+01:00

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

2007-01-25T08:32:00.000+01:00

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

2007-01-16T09:37:00.001+01:00

I've posted some Avignon pics:

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

Dinner in Avignon

2007-01-16T09:10:00.000+01:00

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?

2007-01-12T18:00:00.000+01:00

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.....

2007-01-07T12:16:00.000+01:00

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.

Department store displays at Xmas

2006-12-31T18:33:00.000+01:00

Today Sarah and I made it over to the two big department stores that do incredible displays for Christmas in their windows. They were both amazing. I think Printemps gets style points, they had a theme of Morroco for all their displays, and some very stylish windows. Galleries Lafayette was the winner though, their displays really appealed to the child inside me. They seemed to appeal to all the kids as well.

Each display has a raised platform in front of it on the sidewalk. The platform is for small kids only, so they can get up close and get a good view. Most things in the displays are animated: teapots walk around offering cake, dogs stage a small "bullfight", pigs scuba dive, and bears grill skish-kabobs or jackhammer huge chocolate bars. The attention to detail is amazing, everywhere you look something is going on. And you are surrounded by 5 year old kids who are bouncing around looking at everything. In between the kids displays are some rather odd non-animated displays for us adults.

I've posted some pictures from the displays, and one video. This was also a trial of my new spy camera I got for Christmas, and I was very happy with it. It has built in image stabilization, which helped in the low light situation like these window shots.

Enjoy:
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/ParisXmasLights

Big Bend National Park Texas

2006-12-30T10:26:00.000+01:00

We arrived back in France after a 2 and a half week visit to Texas. It was really great to see all our friends, and eat real TexMex. It was kind of scary driving a car again, and being in the US "car culture". I hadn't driven since last March, and was overwhelmed by being plopped into the Christmas shopping rush in Austin.

We also spent a week in Big Bend hiking with my family, which was very nice. This picture is from our last day of hiking, taken from the Emory Peak trail. The Sierra del Carmen are in the distance, they are about 20 miles away in this photo.

I've posted some photos. I've moved to using Picasa web albums, it has more features than what I was doing hand patching my own site.

Here are the pics:
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics/BigBendXmas2006

Retirement receding in the distance

2006-12-04T20:36:00.000+01:00

I sense that my retirement date crept out a bit last week. This was do to the large leak that my wallet seems to have sprung.

I mentioned in my last post that I was considering a new lens for my camera. Well, after much careful research and wringing of hands, I ended up getting ....*two* lenses. Ouch. I got a Sigma 10-20 mm for nice wide angle shots, and a Canon 28-135 mm zoom with image stabilization. They should be waiting for me when we arrive back in Texas for the holidays.

I'm also a tad worried about Sarah's new friend. She met the "really really nice guy who owns the cool wine shop around the corner". Translation: expect a steady stream of expensive bottles of wine into the apartment.

Last weekend was our last before heading to the US. We did some Xmas shopping, and I finally got to take Sarah to the good Japonaise place that makes its own Soba noodles. Sunday we had large salads with Sarah's cousin Elizabeth for lunch, and then demolished all the salad goodness by tucking into nice slices of Suzy's pear chocolate tarte. Then we took advantage of a last chance to hang out with our Aussie friends, they are definitely getting the "short timer" attitude as they look forward to their return to Sydney.

Friday we head for Austin and then hiking in Big Bend National Park. I probably won't be posting much until we return home to Paris in late December.

Gargoyles, a Ginko, and some Glass

2006-11-26T21:15:00.000+01:00

Sunday I spent some time out with the camera. I spent some time with the telephoto lens catching gargoyles on Notre Dame. They really are amazing. I was disappointed with my lens performance, which might be unfortunate for my 401k if I decide to replace the lens when we return to the US for the holidays.

I then wound my way down the island to the tip, where a lone ginko tree was screaming "Jaune!!!" (yellow) at the top of its lungs. Ginko trees are one of my favorites, and they are really spectacular here in Fall.

I finished up by going inside Notre Dame on the way back. I took some photos of the rose windows, cranking the ISO up and opening the f-stop wide open. I really need to go back and do it properly with a tripod when it is less crowded.

Weekend of Food and Photos

2006-11-19T20:13:00.000+01:00

We had some great food this weekend.

Saturday we went to a nearby seafood place for lunch. Sarah started with a creme of pumkin soup with shrimp that was amazing. Seriously, it was one of the best soups I've ever had. The French *really* know how to do pureed soups. I had shrimp ravioli in a very flavorful sauce. For our main courses we both had grilled fish, with a tasty butter sauce. The fish was very fresh, and the sauce went very well with it. Yum.

November is "Photography Month" in Paris, there are exhibits all over the city. We went to the Museum of European Photography, where they were having an exhibit on Vu magazine. Vu was a weekly french magazine from the late 1920s to 1939. It had stunning photography.

Saturday night we found a new drug dealer. Just kidding. One of the things we miss about Texas is mexican food. Sometimes I just really need a fix of mexican food. Saturday night we found a place that is run by people from Mexico, and has things on the menu that look and taste like mexican food in Texas. We have tried another place in Paris claiming to serve mexican food, and it was *aweful*. This place is really good, and requires reservations several days in advance for Saturday night. The trouble is the price. Mexican food and margaritas for 4 people just shouldn't cost over $200. But it does in Paris, and we'll be going back to this place again. Because it's still a lot cheaper than flying to Austin for dinner.

Sunday we went to a huge photography expo. Dozens of photography galleries from around the globe descend on Paris for a very trendy photography expo. A large portion of it was totally bizarre, some of it was people who get a little too carried away with Photoshop. It was all very expensive. I saw an Ansel Adams print for sale for 44,500 euros, and some Brassai prints up in the 40-50k price range as well. A boring picture of ugly office furniture (fits very nicely in the "bizarre" catagory) was 1,800 euros. One gallery specialized in photos from the 1800s, it was very interesting. People attending the event ranged from people in the photography industry to some college art students and some gaggles of self important jet setting trendy type.

After the expo we went to the new enclave of Japanese restaurants we discovered, and had lovely noodle soup and gyoza.

I also made my first tarte on Sunday afternoon. Since our neighborhood is packed with bakeries, there isn't much of an incentive to bake. But I wanted to see how hard it was. We made a poire-chocolate tarte, and it is really good. Damn, the dark chocolate here is just so good, it's hard to screw up any recipe that has dark chocolate in it.

A Few Extraneous Translations

2006-11-17T21:31:00.000+01:00

I'm counting down to the big 180 million euro "EuroMillions" drawing in an hour (ok, we bought a ticket for fun). I thought I'd mention a few French translations that you might not have heard.

Instead of saying "When pigs fly", the French say "When chickens have teeth".

Instead of "Don't count your chickens before they hatch", the French say "Don't sell your bearskin before you kill the bear"

It doesn't rain cats and dogs here, it rains ropes.

And while the cat is away, the mice here dance instead of play.

Apartement Racket in Paris

2006-11-11T09:00:00.000+01:00

No, don't worry. "Racket" doesn't refer to noisy neighbors. It refers to the rip off of the standard apartement lease in Paris. Let me explain.

At the beginning of October, our water heater in the kitchen went out. I phoned the company is assigned to 'help' us with things like this. I am informed that the standard lease for an apartement in Paris dictates that *we* have to pay for fixing the 8 year old water heater that came with the apartment. Exsqueeze me?

But wait, it gets better. We can't choose an honest plumber, we are required to have the plumber who works for the company owning the building fix it. He comes by for less than 10 minutes, waggles a screwdriver for a minute under it, and tells us if it doesn't work in two days he'll have to replace it. It breaks in 3 days. So basically we had to pay for the plumber of their choice dictate that we have to fork over more $$ for a new heater. It finally arrived yesterday, and we now have hot water.

The really special thing is that they will wire without our authorization as much $$ out of our bank account as they please for the heater, plus the 5 hours of labor it took to install it.

What a racket. It doesn't seem right to have the people renting the apartment pay for replacement of appliances that came with the apartement.

Oh, I wanted to adjust the thermostat on the new heater. The knob in the picture is the only visible control I can get to without unscrewing a large plate off the bottom of the heater. It looked vaguely like it might be a thermostat. Luckily I looked up Vidange.... It means Drain in English. So I'm glad I didn't turn that knob.

Musée des Arts Décoratifs

2006-11-06T08:46:00.000+01:00

This weekend we went to the newly opened Musée des Arts Décoratifs . It's been closed for remodeling since we've been here. Sarah and I enjoy decorative arts exhibits, and for us this museum is really fun. They had some really good Art Nouveau and Art Deco pieces, they would do entire rooms of different periods. It was easy to imagine the rooms were right out of a swanky Paris apartment building.

The museum is wedged into one of the wings of the Louvre, so the layout of it was a bit confusing.

Sunday we walked over to Jardin du Luxembourg. We had a nice stroll around the park. There are tiny ponies there that kids can ride that are really cute. We also enjoyed watching hotly contested boules games (you know they are serious when they break out the tape measure). And of course they rent out little sail boats that the kids sail in the large fountain. The only big disappointment was that the roasted chestnut stand was mobbed by a tour group, so Sarah had to do without her fix.

Super Frenchie Bugs

2006-10-30T20:09:00.000+01:00

One thing I'm discovering about living here, it seems like the cold viruses that go around in the winter are slightly different than the ones that my body is trained to defeat. I have caught one of the Super Frenchie bugs that is making the rounds in Paris right now. We're having the last few beautiful crisp clear Fall days before the temperature nosedives, and I'm spending them with my nose pressed up against the glass, coughing into the endless stream of tissues. ......sigh......

We're finished with travel and visitors for a while, and the tourist crowds are definitely dropping off. That means we can sneak into the Louvre or even (gasp!) go to Musee d'Orsay. Paris is really nice at this time of year. You can enjoy some clear (but cooler) weather, and enjoy some sights sans tourist mobs.

But first I've got to get rid of this cough.

Fill'er up!

2006-10-15T14:42:00.000+02:00

Side note- I've taken the plunge and enabled comments on my blog, so now you can leave comments on entries. Enjoy.

So, sometimes you run across things in Europe that are a little different.

This picture is one of those things. First off, look at the tiny little car, it holds one adult, and a child seat behind it. It's the same size as mopeds, and is electric powered.

Also notice on the left, it's an electric recharging station. You swipe a card at the machine, and it tells you which plug to plug into. We ran into this on a back alley in Florence. The electric mopeds are a dream come true, they are very very quiet, which you really need in Florence. Moped noise pollution here is a problem.

Italia pictures, finally...

2006-10-15T14:02:00.000+02:00

Sarah and I took a great two week trip to Italy at the end of September. We went to Venice, Verona, and Florence.

Venice was beautiful, as long as you stayed away from the "Follow the Umbrella" tourist groups. The back waterways were great to explore and get lost in. There were endless interesting photos waiting to be taken, and it was generally quiet and relaxed. Around San Marco/Rialto was a different story. (insert rant on cruise ship tour groups here). It was interesting watching Venetians do things by boat that we typically see done by truck: Uhaul, mail boat, furniture delivery, laundry pickup. We really enjoyed Murano, where they let you wander into glass blowing workshops and watch the guys work. We will go back in a few years during low low low season, and try to see San Marco's interior, we just couldn't face the long long line this time.

We kicked back in Verona for a few days, it was a great place to just soak in Italy. We didn't do the "Romeo and Juliet" sites, we did tour the colosseum, linger in sidewalk cafes, and seek out a few interesting churches. We also took a break from Italian food, we had Japanese and pigged out at a Brazilian steakhouse.

In Florence we met my parents for a week. It was very nice to spend a week there, and devote larger time slots to visiting things. We were able to spend a lot more time in the Uffizi this time, the Bellini's were really great. And we also spent plenty of time roaming the Boboli gardens. Plus it was fun to hang out with my parents, we don't get to see them very often these days.

I've sorted through pictures, and posted them at

http://suzyinparis.free.fr

This is the second trip to Italy we've made this year, we just can't seem to get enough of the place.

Nuit Blanche 2006

2006-10-08T21:00:00.000+02:00

Paris has a yearly Nuit Blanche ("Sleepless night"), a free city wide Modern art festival put on by the gay mayor. All over the city there are really bizarre art installations. We went to a few. Sarah was fighting a cold, so we didn't stay out all night.

The French seem to be much more willing to accept and promote bizarre modern art, and it it kind of interesting to try to be more open to it myself.

The picture here is an interactive exhibit. Hundreds of thousands of hard candies are wrapped in extremely reflective foil and spilled on the floor, and bright bright lights are overhead. My picture is showing about half the floor area. The "interactive" part is that viewers can take a piece of candy and thus the 'art' changes as it disappears. I just think it makes a mess for the street cleaners.

We also saw gargantuan mobiles of huge (12 feet diameter) balls rotating in the courtyard of City Hall, and Place de Concorde lit up in cool blue.

FYI, I'll be filling in some details of our Italy trip and post some pics from it in about a week. I took so many pictures of Venice, I'm having trouble weeding through them.

Musings over a nice red

2006-09-11T21:11:00.000+02:00

We enjoyed a bottle of Chateau Dassault this weekend with our friend Chris. She stopped by on her way to a conference, and we had a very nice weekend. Weather to die for, light breezy 75-80 F, and crisp blue skies. Yuuuummy. Lot's of Suzy's favorite Paris treat..... walking the streets.

We caught up with Chris on what's shakin in the U.S. (what kind of circus are you people running over there?), and decided that some reds (like this one) really are enhanced when drunk with food.

We pondered the wonders of the universe, and the history of the internet.

We had dinner at an old favorite over by the Louvre, and slurped up some nice crepes in front of the Stravinsky fountain. This made for a heavy few days of eating, since Sarah and I went out the night before Chris arrived for my birthday dinner. We did a long drawn out French meal (10 courses if you count the cleansing sorbet between the firsh course and the meat course).

My head is still spinning from the weekend a bit, and this weekend we're headed out for vacation again. Off to Italy for a while. Damn, I love my life.

Zermatt Hiking

2006-08-28T19:53:00.000+02:00

We just spent a lovely week in Zermatt. We timed it just right, it was at the end of August, the weather was brilliant, but the crowds were gone. The picture here is the Matterhorn (Mont Cervin to the French) from the walk to Tuferen.

Zermatt is a big ski resort, which means that there is a large array of lifts and specialized mountain cog trains to drag you up the hill to some amazing hikes. While the expensive "resort-i-ness" of Zermatt didn't appeal to us, the broad range of hiking you can do under the shadow of the Matterhorn definitely was.

There are also tiny little villages (count the houses with no need to remove your shoes) up in the hills that serve really decent food. In fact, there is one trail we were on called the Gourmet Weg. The food was expensive because they have to drag it all up the hill or get it airlifted in, but quite nice in the middle of a hike.

I could describe each hike, but I think I'd rather get together pictures and post them. The pictures really were nice on this trip.

Pictures are at http://suzyinparis.free.fr/Zermatt2006/index.html

Transforming Paris

2006-08-15T20:08:00.000+02:00

At the end of our street, there has always been a grungy crusty dirty building that is currently a school. There is a law in Paris that you have to clean the outsides of buildings every 10 years, and this building has been in flagrant violation. The word in the neighborhood is that the school has wanted to build an underground parking structure, and the neighboring buildings had protested vigorously, and had been able to block or at least stall the parking.

The school, in protest, has been not getting its regular (and much needed) cleaning. A few months ago scaffolding went up on part of the building, and it was cleaned and restored. Last week the scaffolding came down, and the picture above shows clean vs. dirty.

Quite a transformation. The building looks incredible. I hope this doesn't mean the parking facility was approved.

Vineyards for as far as the eye can see

2006-08-14T17:29:00.000+02:00

This is a view (on a cloudy day) from Hautvilliers out over the vineyards of Champagne.

Sarah and I spent a delightful weekend in the Champagne region of France. Our neighbors who live next door invited us out for the weekend to their country home. We managed very well despite rainy weather both days. They have a very cozy house in the Marne river valley, with views of vineyards on the hills out the windows. I could feel my stress level go down as soon as we got there, it was just so relaxing and inviting.

Here's some of the things we did:

Went on a champagne cellar tour in Epernay. They have a gargantuan wine casket from 1880's, it holds 200,000 barrels, and was taken dragged by oxen to the Paris fair in 1889. The tour also included a train tour of their underground cellars where they ferment and store the champagne. I now know plenty about riddling bottles and disgorging sediment.

Drove through the vineyards, and walked around Hautvilliers (pronounced "ought vee yay"). In Hautvilliers, we saw the church where Dom Perignon is buried, and the understated headquarters of Moet et Chandon (makers of Dom Perignon label).

Visited Rheims cathedral, and saw it's Chagall stained glass window. Church was in rough shape, the stone used to make it is fairly soft, and has suffered over the centuries.

Visited WWI American memorial and graveyard. This area (Belleau Bois and Chateau Thierry) was where the front between French and German troops was stalled for several years during WWI. The battles in the area became much more real to me as I listened to our neighbors stories about what happened to their relatives during the war.

Ate fantastic food. I'm always amazed by the interest and depth of knowledge that some French people have for their food. "Here, try this honey on your croissant, it was harvested in an area where a lot of chestnuts are grown, and that gives it an interesting flavor", and also a long discussion on why biodiversity in types of apples being grown is important. We have a wonderful homemade egg-chevre-thyme tarte, mixed greens with sauteed chestnuts and smoked bacon, and an intoxicating homemade poire and dark chocolate tarte with almonds.

Had a roaring fire. It was rainy most of the weekend, so our neighbors built a wonderful roaring fire in the huge fireplace. Sipping Blanc de Blanc local Champagne while staring into a roaring fire. Yum. Hard to believe in the middle of August, but it worked for us.

Our neighbors are so delightful, and so kind. It was a very memorable weekend.

Berlin Photos are up

2006-08-10T22:56:00.000+02:00

I posted some pics from Berlin. This wasn't an intensive photo trip, just had the small digital camera with us.

Enjoy:
http://suzyinparis.free.fr

Ich bin ein Berliner

2006-08-01T21:40:00.000+02:00

Oh, Berlin. We got back Monday morning from our long weekend in Berlin. We had an absolute blast!

This photo is taken from the roof of the Reichstag, which is the German Parliament building. This building is where the European portion of WWII ended. After the war, it was substantially changed, and this dome was added a few years back. The dome serves as a reminder that government should be transparent.

It was a nice break away from Paris in the height of tourist season. We stayed in a nice quiet area of Berlin, Savigny Platz. Our hotel room overlooked the square, we were right over a few sidewalk cafes. I think we hit the timing just right. We waited until Berlin recovered from it's bout of WorldCup fever, and the city was deserted. We waited in 2 lines during our 4 days there, both of them under 10 minutes!

We did some major museum hopping, the 3 day Museum Pass made it really easy to hit a lot of them:

Museum of Arts and Materials - fun Art Nouveau glass
Pergamon Museum- fantastic Pergamon marbles, and Babylonian gate
Egyptian Museum - bust of Nefretiti is why its famous, but the rest of it was outstanding as well
Art Deco / Art Nouveau museum - fantastic Zsolnay ceramic collection and extensive metalworks collection
Picasso museum- too many plastic surgeon nightmares for me. Sarah loved it.
Musical Instruments museum- walking canes that turned into mini violins, pianos in every way, shape and form.
Gemaldegalerie - mind blowing Northern European painting collection

We also walked down Unter den Linden, formerly East Berlin gone totally Western capitalist (yes, you can see a Starbucks from the Brandenburg Gate). We visited Checkpoint Charlie, and the overpriced museum there, which shows you the different escape methods of escaping East Germany. And we went shopping on Ku'damm, we found German styles, sizes and prices to be much more to our liking than Paris!

We were totally emotionally drained after the new Holocaust memorial. Sometimes you happen on something unexpected, and it really blows your socks off. The top of the memorial is over 2000 cement blocks covering a city block . They are roughly coffin sized, but they are between 2-10 feet tall. You wander down in them and they tower over you. There was an exhibit you could tour which told the stories of victims, and really made you realize that they were individual humans. It also did a bit of shocking you with sheer numbers and scary photos. It made me afraid for the human race to think that people did that. I'm not Jewish, but I left crying. Don't worry, I did manage to recover.

We also managed to make some new friends in Berlin, one of them is a professor at UT, his German girlfriend who lives in Berlin, and also an art teacher from California. The Berliner took us to a biergarten in the neighborhood, which we enjoyed a lot. We also found a great asian fusion restaurant that had fantastic sushi rolls.

And as if this wasn't good enough, everything was *much* cheaper than Paris, which made it even easier to enjoy. Sarah's Birkenstocks were 18 euros, beer was half the price it is in Paris, and our hotel was 51 euros a night. sweeeeet.

We'll definitely come back to Berlin.

Heat Wave!

2006-07-19T20:32:00.000+02:00

Usually our blog tends to reflect on fun, happier moments and memories that I want to remember 10 years from now. My intention is to do a big 'wget' on our url when we go back to the US, and have it to read over fondly when we want to go down Memory Lane. But today I'm writing about the heat, because someday I hope to look back on this and be amused.

#ifdef SOAPBOX

It is bloody hot here! Hello!? Would a ceiling fan kill you?

It got up to 96 here today. I know you Texans are scoffing, it's over 100 in Austin today. But guess what, bucko? We don't have air conditioning in the apartment (no one here does). After several days of over 90, the thick plaster walls are nicely warmed up. Last night at 11pm it was still 87 *inside* the apartement. Ugh. At 7pm, Parisiens are awefully fragrant on an unairconditioned, overcrowded bus. Sweat just pours off me wedged into the metro, and I peel off wet clothes when I get home. Oh, did I also mention that no one here *ever* wears shorts? That's just weird to me (and makes my workday even warmer). I won't mention my warm office because I don't talk about work on the blog, it's just not civilized.

#endif

On a lighter note, tonight our nicely formal neighbor brought over instructions for getting to their country house. They've invited us out for a weekend in August. The topic of the gay Paris mayor came up, and our neighbor said, " You know what we call the Mayor of Paris, don't you? Notre Dame de Paris." (translation: our lady of Paris). It was cute coming from our very polite neighbors.

Bon Quartorze Juillet !!!

2006-07-15T13:32:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was the French equivalent of our July 4th. I must say, they really get it right here. By the end of the day, I was ready to trade in my passport for a French one.

I began the day waking up to the sound of the national guard's horse division practising their trumpet and drum routine that they would be playing in the parade. I stumbled out of bed and we had coffee and went to the park. Sarah and our friend Beth went running, and I sat on a park bench and tried to see just how low I could get my pulse. On the walk back along the river, we watched all the different French air force planes fly directly over us, including the jets that were rigged to disperse tricolore (red, white, blue) out their exhaust. A while later I was hanging out on our balcony, camera at the ready, to see if the planes were doing a second pass. They didn't, but several clusters of helicopters flew over, and monster tanks went hauling butt down rue Saint Antione. After a while I heard strains of the same music I heard waking up. I bolted down to the street in front of the Republican Guarde, and watched 250 horses with riders in full Frenchie dress gear. They were amazing. Because we weren't on the official parade route, there weren't many people around, and I was able to get 5-10 feet away. When I arrived, I had no idea how many of them were in the parade. I watched them file by 3 horses across, and they just kept going forever. Horses kept turning the corner, and streaming past. Everyone looked extremely gallant in their full dress uniform, shiny plumed metal helmet, and sword.

In the evening we were lucky enough to be invited over to our friends' (Jim and Stephanie) apartement in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. We did the appropriate toast to Bastille Day, and hung out in air conditioned comfort. We headed over to Champs de Mars with the masses. Jim went scouting for good places on his bike, now we know where to head next year. We ended up squished against the Ecole Militaire at the back of Champs de Mars. Since they moved the fireworks this year to this side of the Eiffel tower, lots of space was blocked off.

The 3 tons of fireworks were choreographed to Mozart, that was pumped out across the crowd by speakers. They were the most amazing fireworks I've ever seen, with a special French creative flare. The French are fairly quiet watching fireworks, in the US we are much less reserved. The lighting on Ecole Militare, and being squished in the crowds meant Suzy didn't get much in the way of pictures, so her memory will have to suffice. After the show we broke out another bottle of the bubbly while waiting for the crowd to thin out. We walked home, which took quite a while, we dragged into the apartment, happy and exhausted at 2am.

Note to prospective invaders of France: 10:30am on 14 Juillet 2007 would be a great time to sneak in and take over this place. All things military and all high ranking officials are consumed fussing with the big parade.

Woe is me, for I live in France

2006-07-11T21:41:00.000+02:00

No, don't worry, I'm not homesick.

But I am upset that France lost the World Cup finals, it was a high stress game. Paris had a lot of long faces the next morning, the nation was definitely in mourning. Things are slowly easing back to normal, and I imagine everyone will let loose on Friday (Bastille Day).

Aunt Jemima, Lempicka, Pho, Dorian, and the Eiffel Tower

2006-07-08T23:39:00.000+02:00

This morning we were craving a big Kerbey Lane breakfast. I guess after 11 months here, I'm allowed to crave a pancake. We actually found a place run by a guy from the US that serves typical diner food, including something roughly equivalent to Kerbey Lane breakfast. We tried it out for the first time this morning and had a nice big breakfast, including the first pancakes we've had in a year. It was pretty dang decent.

We also went to the Lempicka exhibit, it is closing in a week, so this was our last chance. It was at a museum out in the burbs, so we treked out to see it. Lempicka did sleek art deco style paintings, mainly of people, but also some still life. The exhibit was really good, it's always interesting to see something in person that you've only seen in art books. Her paintings really came alive in person.

After that we decided to do a run to Chinatown. We have a few things we like that we can only find there (wasabi peas, candied ginger, reasonably priced japonaise beer). We had lunch at a great Vietnamese dive. Really good Chicken Pho. In the asian grocery store they had a weird fruit I've never seen before. It's roughly the size of a football (american football), and very spikey on the outside. One of our friends had warned us about these, saying they have an overpowering stench. I was still curious, but didn't want to lug a football sized fruit back with us. We happened upon some cookies flavored with the fruit, so we got those. When we opened the cookies, a bad smell filled the air, but we were determined to try them. They were *hideous*. I had one bite and had to go brush my teeth, and rinse with listerine. The fruit is called dorian, if you ever see one, run the other direction...fast!

Tonight we went to the Eiffel Tower to try out Suzy's new tripod, and also scope out the turf for next Friday night, when they shoot fireworks off the Eiffel Tower for Bastille Day. It looks like we'll be celebrating Bastille Day with some friends that have an apartement a few blocks away, and wandering over to watch fireworks with the masses.

Suzy's Football Fetish continues...

2006-07-07T21:52:00.000+02:00

Apparently nothing else is happening on the face of the earth except WorldCup football. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. I guess I've got it pretty bad, I'm even joining the worldcup channel on my company's IRC server and hanging out with the real football junkies.

Wednesday's France-Portugal match was a lot of fun. We had our crazy riotous Aussie friends, Vivianne and Beth, over to watch the game. What is it with Australians and stressing their vocal chords? We had a great time watching the game. We didn't fit every sports fan stereotype though, we were sipping cosmopolitians, popped a bottle of champagne, and had fresh french strawberries dipped in dark chocolate. We also had a very nice chocolate mousse cake to celebrate Sarah's birthday.

After France won, we headed out to Bastille a few blocks away. The streets were erupting with happy French football fans, French flags were waving everywhere, fireworks were being set off in the street. It was great!

For you non football fans, don't worry, Sunday night is the final between France and Italy. Suzy will be giving up her football fetish after that.

Fend for yourselves! July sales hit France!

2006-07-03T20:41:00.000+02:00

So, France is very organized about their sales at shops and department stores. They have them twice a year, January and July. The masses pour out and mob the stores. I went into BHV to shop for a Skype headset Saturday, and almost lost an arm. It seems that certain classes of things are on sale, and geeky stuff isn't on the list. Sarah and I are not big shoppers, and the mobs at the sales aren't really all that fun for us. Think of the day after Thanksgiving in the US, it's kind of like that.

We've been having some heat lately. It only gets up to 90 degrees, but nowhere (including our apartement) has air conditioning. I never realized how much heat a computer or a TV pumps out until we lived somewhere without AC. And you really can spend quite a lot of time pouring over the fine print on frozen foods standing around in the frozen section at the grocery store. Some people get little portable AC units, but they are $$, and add a chunk to the electric bill.

Not so ugly duckling

2006-07-03T20:31:00.000+02:00

So we have another batch of ducklings in Suresnes at Parc du Chateau. I've gotten into the habit of walking thru the park on the way to work (adds 5 minutes to the walk). This morning I was watching them, and a group of kindergarten aged kids came running up. They got really excited by the furry fuzzy little fellows.

We also have had quite a lot of World Cup fever here, and Suzy has finally gotten bitten by the bug. France played Brazil Saturday night. Brazil won the last World Cup 4 years ago, and they were the favorites to win this time. "The Blues" put a stop to that. The French played an amazing game, it was a really good game to watch. ....And the French won. We watched the game live. I hit *mute* when they got to the end of the game, and listened to Paris erupt around me. I've never heard several million people go completely bonkers in a close radius like that, it was quite a ruckus. Our apartement is a few blocks from Bastille, and the crowds swarmed into the streets after the game. Everywhere we heard fireworks going off and the modern equivalent of shooting your gun in the air ( laying down on the car horn ). We don't really have a unifying thing like this in the US, the closest thing we have is the Olympics. But it is different from the Olympics, even more intense from a national pride standpoint.

All Fete-ed out

2006-06-25T20:41:00.000+02:00

This week has been a busy but fun one. On Wednesday (June 21), we had the yearly Fete de la Musique. All sorts of musical performers are scheduled all over the city in open air free concerts. We saw all sorts of stuff. In the upper right of the pic was our favorite, a guy playing Spanish, Turkish, and Moroccan music in the courtyard of Hotel de Sens. We also saw a cuban band, a classical woodwinds concert, and the odd group in the upper left. Their instruments looked like a bunch of trumpets glued together. We also saw the Gay mens chorus (drowned out by two other choral goups), and a bit of Cesaria Evora. All of this was within a 10 minute walk of our apartement. There were other concerts happening all over France, the news said the next morning that there were over 20,000 concerts in France at Fete de la Musique. It was fun, you really felt like the city was out celebrating summer.

This weekend was also Gay Pride weekend in Paris. Wow. There was a march from Montparnasse to Bastille, and it went a block of our apartment up bd. Henri IV. At the end in Bastille, there was a huge party. They estimated 800,000 people showed up. The theme for the march seemed to be large trucks loaded up with huge speakers blaring out really cool dance music. It was a really fun crowd, a lot of straight people were there to have fun, it's nice to know us queers still throw the best party around. It did have one small problem, it must have been sponsored by a Hearing Aid company. The volume was dangerously high. While we were taking a Cosmo break in the apartment (a block away from the action), our windows were rattling from the noise. The Hearing Aid sponsor now has 800,000 new customers. It was an incredible gathering, I've never seen any GLBT gathering on this scale before.

Sunday we had planned to go to a food festival at Village St. Paul (2 blocks from the apartment, do we live in the right part of town or what?). We woke to a steady rain. We had a very wet trip to the Bastille Sunday morning market, and decided to blow off the food festival.

Balcony Pic

2006-06-19T20:49:00.000+02:00

In IRC today, I realized that I had never posted a picture of our balcony. Here's one I took a month or two ago when Spring was just creeping out. The weather is still a little grey around the edges.

We're on the 5th floor (6th in US terms) . The tree top below has filled out nicely, and you can see the Pantheon way off in the distance.

Tootie Fruitie

2006-06-19T19:40:00.000+02:00

On Sunday morning we went to the outdoor market, the one in our neighborhood is held every Sunday morning at Bastille. Dozens and Dozens of vendors selling all sorts of food. We found a new vendor this week who sells nothing but strawberries. We bought the most amazing strawberries I've ever had in my life. They are deep dark red, and are sweeter than any I've ever had. Usually I'm not too fond of strawberries because they just aren't sweet enough. These are truly amazing. We're also getting fabulous bing cherries and mangos as well.

So begins our tootie fruitie summer fruit.

POETS day

2006-06-17T20:40:00.000+02:00

Friday I celebrated a weekly British holiday, POETS day (Piss Off Early, Tomorrow's Saturday). It was a hard week, I finally finished a looong work item, so I decided to blow out of work early. Don't tell the boss. :-)

I got home by4, and Sarah and I went out for a late lunch. It was a beautiful day out, 75 and sunny. We did a proper sidewalk cafe lunch at Bastille (Cafe des Phares for those keep score). I don't know, somehow food tastes better when you've skipped out of work early for it. Afterwards I grabbed a cassis sorbet cone, and we walked up a street that is packed with musical instrument stores and camera stores. At a guitar store, I notice that they are 50% classical guitar and the rest acoustic/electric. Nice. We must have seen a dozen camera stores, lots of used and collectors stuff. Paris does tend to cluster related stores together: all the papier stores are located together, there is a pet store district, an area with plant stores. Eventually we noticed that it was happy hour (how convenient!) so we had a drink at a Brasilian place. The search continues for a good margarita in Paris. This one was certainly better than Le Perla, but can't hold a candle to Manuel's frozen mango.

Saturday morning was chilly out, we sat out on the balcony and had coffee wearing politec jackets. We had oozing warm pain au chocolate for breakfast while walking around a quiet Place des Vosgues. It warmed up nicely in the afternoon, and we went to the Bagatelle gardens. In mid June, the famous rose gardens are in full bloom. A riot of color exploding, with sweet scent drifting by. The rose gardens I've seen before are ones that are working hard to live in Texas weather, this one was happy roses on steroids. We're also adding this spot to our list of places to picnic. There were a lot of nice open shady places that would be nice for a picnic.

Room with a view in Assisi

2006-06-11T22:19:00.000+02:00

There is just something about throwing open the shutters in your hotel room, and stepping out onto a balcony with a nice view. This photo was taken from our balcony in Assisi. We had a nice view out over the Umbrian countryside, and also a view (not in this pic) of bits of the Basilica St. Francis.

We had a great time here, the place is quite crowded by day with day trippers running around in clumps with their tour guides, but in the morning and evening it it just magical. Wandering around pedestrian streets, with beautiful views around every corner. We did a nice hike in the countryside up into the hills around Assisi, and I don't think I've ever climbed so many stairs in my life. The city is still rebuilding some from the 1997 earthquake, but it's basically finished, and looks great.

The food here was fantastic, a lot of grilled meats including grilled umbrian sausages and the best lamb chops I've had in my life. I had a fresh pasta with a black truffle sauce that was amazing. Pasta was cooked just perfectly, and the truffles added a nice grainy texture that was really good.

More pictures at:
http://suzyinparis.free.fr/Assisi2006/index.html

Pompeii

2006-06-06T23:11:00.000+02:00

We took one day out of our Sorrento stay to go to Pompeii (about 45 minutes away on the train).

It was really interesting. While most of the really cool artifacts are kept at a museum in downtown Naples, there was plenty to see here. Most of what we know about daily Roman life today is because of the sites uncovered by the Mount Vesuvius eruption.

We walked around, going through the bathhouse, by the bakers, and managed to find a brothel.

It's weird, but the photos just don't convey how interesting it was. There is just something really bizarre about wandering around in a city that was snuffed out in 79 AD by a volcano.

Photos at: http://suzyinparis.free.fr/Pompeii2006/index.html

Amalfi coast Italy

2006-06-06T22:51:00.000+02:00

We had a fantastic time in Italy. We spent 5 days in Sorrento, a town on the Amalfi coast. It's just south of Naples. There are several small towns clinging to the cliffs over the Mediterranean. This picture is of Positano. There is an amazing bus ride from Sorrento to Positano along the coast. The dramatic cliffs make for a scary road with cars squeezing by each other. We had Positano gelato (candied orange bits and nutella flavored) after lunch. With so much coastline, we of course had amazing seafood. Fresh grilled fish, fresh langostinos and shrimp. And we were right next to Naples, where they invented Pizza. We pigged out.

We splurged on a nice meal our last night, and had a truly amazing red italian wine served in monstrous red wine glasses. Sarah will have to tell you about the wine, she enjoyed it a lot.

We did some hiking close to Sorrento, and swimming off the coast to help work off all the good food.

We stayed in a villa converted into a hotel. It was a little run down, but we had a great view over the little port from our balcony.

It was a really relaxing vacation, just what we needed.

Photos at: http://suzyinparis.free.fr/AmalfiCoast2006/index.html

Off into the wild bleu yonder

2006-05-24T20:30:00.000+02:00

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

2006-05-21T20:56:00.000+02:00

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

2006-05-15T08:13:00.000+02:00

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

2006-05-08T20:05:00.000+02:00

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

2006-05-02T19:31:00.000+02:00

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

2006-05-02T07:31:00.000+02:00

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

2006-05-01T13:34:00.000+02:00

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?

Orchid revival

2006-04-29T11:02:00.000+02:00

When we bought this orchid during a sale at the flower shop in late January, it had three blooms on it. About a week after we got it home, all the blooms dropped, and two of its leaves went belly up as well. Yikes. We chopped the bloom spike back, and consulted with an orchid expert (Suzy's dad). We think (hope?) we have nursed it back to health.

This week we had another bloom open, hopefully this one won't give up the ghost so fast.

Les Invalides

2006-04-23T17:24:00.000+02:00

We visited Les Invalides, which houses an interesting armory exhibit, a WWII exhibit, and Napolean's tomb. Napolean's tomb was OK, and the WWII exhibit was closed for renovation, so we hung out at the armory and weapons exhibit. It reminded me that mankind has always been a bunch of bloodthirsty "I'm gonna kick your rear" species. They had armor from several different French kings, some of the metalworking on it was quite artistic. One set was decorated in hundreds of tiny fleur de lis. They had room after room of intricately decorated swords, pistols, and musket/rifle thingies.

This weekend we celebrated our first picnic of the season. We had a champagne picnic on Place des Vosges, complete with French strawberries which have a slightly different taste than ours. We sat near the classical strings players that were playing. The sun was out, the trees are leafing out, and the fountains were going. Tres bien! Sarah and I are looking forward to many more picnics. We'll have to modify our gig a little, we got busted by the Parc police for drinking champagne in the park. Perhaps the champagne flutes will be replaced by less obvious plastic tumblers next time.

Spring Flowers in Suresnes

2006-04-14T21:21:00.000+02:00

So while we live in downtown Paris, I actually commute out to Suresnes, right outside Paris on the western side. Last week Suresnes suddenly exploded with flowers. The town of Suresnes must spend a fortune on flowers.

The bottom two pics here are in a Park (Parc du Chateau) that I can walk through on the way to work. Whoever the gardener is here, he/she has a serious bulb fetish. Narcissus, Daffodils, and Tulips for as far as the eye can see. The baby ducklings are just too cute, there are 3 of them, all fuzzy.

I really enjoy the flowers, yes, my tax dollars hard at work, and it's worth every penny.

The Dog thing

2006-04-13T21:07:00.000+02:00

So, I've spent the last 6 months wondering which the French like more: their children, or their dogs. Don't get me wrong, the French adore their children, from what I see, being a child in Paris is a nice gig if you can get it.

But the French seem to have a very unusual relationship with their dogs. They constantly walk them and have exquisite little coats that Fido wears for his walk. And Fido can poop wherever he wants on the sidewalk, and no one seems to mind. There are some fussy damn little dogs in this town as well (Chupa, that's you!). Countless numbers of Pomeranians with their hair teased out so they look like a furry basketball. Stores everywhere that specialize in dog paraphernalia.

There is one dog in the neighborhood that is ugly as all get-out. He looks like a chihuahua, only with random sprigs of wiry white fur sticking out. His dad owns an art gallery on rue St. Paul. So we always see this scrappy little dog watching the world go by fromt he front door of the gallery. We both think he's kind of cute in his own way. We've even seen his dad riding a bike with the dog in the front basket.

So at the beginning of April, we noticed that they were displaying several pieces of art in the window that look exactly like the scrappy dog. We went by for a closer look one night, and the owner came out while we were looking. He explained that the display was his version of an April Fools Joke. His dog is named 'Pique' (not sure I spelled it right, pronounced like 'peek'). He's painted several paintings of the dog, and done a little sculpture of his ugly head. Most of the paintings had a play on words involved. He explained them to us, which was a little hard for me with my broken french. But one that I did understand was very cute. It was a cubist style painting of the dog sitting down. He calles it "Pique assis", which is pronounced 'peek-ah-see'. Translated it means 'Pique sitting'. He said "Pique assis, not Picasso".

Tonight the Pique shrine was gone, just like all the cute doggie coats are being put away now that Spring is here.

Marathon de Paris

2006-04-09T19:59:00.000+02:00

This morning I woke to a sound that I hadn't heard since leaving Austin. I heard helicopters flying near by. It took me a while to realize that it must be helicopters following the Paris Marathon. So I grabbed the pocket camera and headed outside. I saw the runners zipping by on rue St. Antione at the end of our street. I went down and watched for a while. The streets were fairly quiet (it was 8:30 am on Sunday), but I listened to the thundering of thousands of tennis shoes on pavement as this mass of humanity went by. I took this photo right at the end of the street.

I stumbled into the bakery and got some pain chocos for Sarah and I, watched the thundering mass for a while longer, and then went home. We found it being broadcast live on French tv. As we watched the coverage, we got the Paris map, and figured out their approximate route. About an hour later, I started to recognize things on tv, and then heard helicopters again. I realized they were headed back into Bastille, down Henri IV, and past the other end of our street. So I headed back out for more pictures. I have to say the first time was more impressive, when so many of them were packed so tightly together, pounding away on the pavement. Truc, next year I want to see you here.

Kind of odd, our house in Austin also happens to be on a popular marathon route. I seem to sip coffee and watch marathons outside my front door no matter where I am.

This weekend we also made a run on Chinatown here for Japanese cooking supplies, and some good Vietnamese food. It was beautiful weather, so we walked there, which was a decent walk.

Springtime in the police state

2006-04-02T17:21:00.000+02:00

Spring has sprung! Warm weather, blue skies and sunshine have hit Paris. The trees are leafing out, sidewalk cafes are bustling..... and Paris is locked in demonstrations and riots over the CPE law. Students are going bonkers over a law intended to encourage employers to hire young workers because the law also makes it easy to fire the workers.

We spent the weekend walking the streets, enjoying the sunshine. We ended up closer to the Sorbonne than I had thought we were, and saw the street that's barricaded off by police, and kept noticing the large number of policemen on the streets. Police headquarters across from Notre Dame looked ready to launch large riot patrol with vans lining the streets. Tuesday is another mass transit strike.

This afternoon we discovered that the opera singer has returned to Place des Vosges. The square was packed with people, but no one was on the grass yet, since it's off limits until April 15. On the way back from Place des Vosges, we ran into a counter demonstration, people who are demonstrating against the people demonstrating. They feel the demonstrations have gone too far, and want the schools opened back up. I ran out and grabbed one of their stickers "Stop la Greve" (Stop the Strike). There were hundreds and hundreds of people, we didn't hang around to see just how many. Suzy is pretty whimpy, since she keeps getting emails from the US Embassy warning us about the demonstrations, and telling us to stay away from large groups of people.

We're estatic about the spring weather. I think living most of my life in Texas, I didn't gain a proper appreciation of just how wonderful it can be when the cold grey clouds finally break up, and you finally need a pair of sunglasses.

London photos are up

2006-04-01T11:00:00.000+02:00

I've put together a few pics from our London trip. I didn't take many, since most of our time was spent in museums. Odd, the museums are all free in London (but ask for a donation), and Westminster Abbey costs 10 pounds (roughly 17 USD) to get into. Hmmmm.... does God know that they are charging that much to get into a church?

Pics also include a shot or two of Elgin marbles in the British Museum, and the Chihuly glass piece hanging in the central foyer of the Victoria and Albert museum.

http://suzyinparis.free.fr

Suzy's life of crime

2006-03-31T19:53:00.000+02:00

So, March is finally done, so I'll confess the crime I've been committing all month, and how I capped it off with style last night.

Last night I had a truly Parisien experience. Because I had a late dinner with some work colleagues (Rob, thanks for recommending Les Galopins), I missed the last bus into Paris. Ugh. So I took the longer tramline to La Defense. For the Tram, you pass your ticket thru the turnstiles to exit. You have to go thru the turnstile, and push the door aside. Both the door and turnstile lock after you go thru them.

Why am I telling you details about going thru turnstiles? Because Suzy ended up at 10:15PM in the La Defense station without a valid transit pass, and she had to follow someone else thru. She bolted over the turnstile, and grabbed the door before it locked shut. We won't mention how delicately she foisted herself over. I see high school kids do it all the time. Funny it's not quite as easy when you are middle aged, and have been drinking wine with a nice heavy dinner.

You see, I accidentally ended up with a pass this month that was only valid in Zones 1-2, and my place of work is in Zone 3. The Tram was also in Zone 3. All month I've been quickly flashing my pass when I board the bus in Zone 3, then I'm home free because all the rest of my entries are in Zones 1-2. Next month I'll be dang sure I get the right pass.

Traditional English afternoon tea

2006-03-27T22:16:00.000+02:00

I didn't have any photos of our lovely afternoon tea, it was just too quaint to mar the moment by dragging out the camera. So the camera stayed stowed in the jacket. We had a very traditional English afternoon tea at the famous Cadogan Hotel in the intimate drawing room of the hotel. We met up with some friends, and it was really fun. Prim and properly attired waiters with deep serious voices waited on us hand and foot. They keep bringing sandwich bits, then scone bits, then pastry bits until you can eat no more. I even had a cucumber sandwich, and it was quite nice. They served clotted cream with the scones, it sounds icky, but tastes great. I'm still listening to my arteries clog up, and dreaming of another yummy scone.

I did get a nice pic the day before of Big Ben and a red doubledecker bus, so I've included that.

Pomp and Circumstance in London

2006-03-26T21:00:00.000+02:00

London is a crazy mix of old and new, I captured some different sides here. They have lots of impressively dressed guards and ceremonies. The guard in the lower right is trudging back and forth in front of Buckingham Palace. In the lower left is a fairly succinct statement from one of the protest signs in front of Westminster, there were all sorts of anti-war signs. And in the upper left are some ideas for my next haircut.

London Eye, ...or London Eyesore?

2006-03-26T20:40:00.000+02:00

This monstrous beast is the London Eye, which slowly creaks around at a clip of 30 minutes per rotation. It looks like a giant bicycle wheel. There are 32 glass enclosed capsules that hold 10-20 people each. While it is pretty cool, it doesn't look quite right to be standing in front of Westminster Abbey, where they have been crowning kings and queens since 1066, and see this lurking behind Big Ben. It clashes a bit.

The building on the left is London County Hall, it used to be the seat of London's government, now it's a hotel. We stayed here, really odd to be sleeping in some former bureaucrat's office.

Delving into the French....over lunch

2006-03-20T20:19:00.001+01:00

Sunday we were invited over to the neighbors for lunch. They're French, which is soooo cool because it's harder to make inroads with the French here than the English speaking expats here. The expats all share the common trait of being outsiders, and it draws us all together. And I think especially in Paris it's harder to make inroads into French society because people here are constantly under seige by the hordes of tourists that flock here.

This is the second set of neighbors we've socialized with, they have also lived in this building for over 30 years. Really amazing when you come from our 'I wanna build a new house' mentality in Texas. Their apartement is the same layout as ours, unfortunately someone had remodeled it before they moved in, and had gotten ride of the details that I find myself admiring in our own apartement every day (finely detailed crown molding, elaborate art deco fireplace). Their place was filled to the brim with beautiful decorating.

They had also invited a friend over, and their adult son joined us as well. It was really interesting, the conversation was roughly 75% in French. I know Sarah was much more engaged than I was, it was like drinking from a firehose for me. We covered all sorts of topics, one thing I find amazing with the French is the depth into which they dive with their conversation. They have a patience for detailed discussion of small topics. We spent quite a while discussing the pattern painted on the coffee service. While you might think "gosh, that's boring", it's actually interesting in its own way, and insightful to me as someone trying to work with the French.

We had a very nice lunch with a wonderful cheese course. I'm hoping we've made some new friends. Some new *French* friends.

Restoring Paris (and my peace of mind)

2006-03-18T16:17:00.000+01:00

I captured this on one of our loooong Sunday walks. It's of the reconstruction of Pont Neuf. They are really doing a number on it, they remove quite a bit and rebuild it. It won't be finished until late 2007. Since Sarah and I have a print of the famous Brassai black and white picture of Pont Neuf on our wall, we would really really like to see it in all its finished glory.

Also, look in the distance. See the tower that looks like a bell tower? It's actually a temporary construction elevator on the Palais de Justice, where they are doing some renovation. Interesting how they disguised it to blend in.

Paris is waking up from the long grey winter slumber (or at least I hope it is). We've had some better weather lately, including some nice sun. This translates into Parisiens with cabin fever taking to the streets, and sitting bundled up in the sun on sidewalk cafes. For Sarah and I it means walking. And walking.

Today I realized how much the long Parisien lunch on the weekend relaxes me and lowers my blood pressure. It's awesome. Sarah and I had lunch today at La Rotiserie de Beaujolais, a French Bistro owned by Tour d'Argent. It's on the river, I had a nice view of Ile St. Louis. I started with escargot, which were perfect (not too chewy), and in traditional parsley garlic butter. Sarah had a very beefy (not pun intended, it was made with a strong beef broth) onion soupe. I had a nice roast chicken with to-die-for mashed potatoes, and Sarah had a nice confit du canard, which was very tender. For dessert we shared a rich chocolate gateau still gooey inside with a very nice vanilla bean sauce. Every once in a while we just have to have a nice enjoyable relaxed meal. While it was pricey, I definitely left with a calm peace of mind and much lower blood pressure. Shouldn't this be covered under my medical insurance? :-)

When in doubt...Strike!!!

2006-03-11T10:46:00.000+01:00

There always seems to be some group in France upset about something, and the French show it by having a strike, and also a 'Manifestation', or demonstration. For instance last November, the railway workers had a strike, and also marched in the streets of Paris. Right now, University students are striking over new labor laws that make it easy to fire people under 26 years in age. Sarah emerged from a movie theater last week, was trying to cross the street, and ended up getting sucked into a march across Paris of students.

France takes the plight of the common worker very seriously, I think it's hardwired in from the French Revolution. When a manifestation is scheduled, loads of policemen show up to manage traffic around the demonstration, and deal with anyone who gets out of hand in the demonstration. Small groups who are having a manifestation get bent out of shape if there aren't a lot of policemen there, they feel that the government isn't taking them seriously if there aren't a lot of police there.

The student protests have become quite large, many universities are affected. Last week a group of students at the Sorbonne barricaded themselves inside the school. More demonstrations are planned for next week. We watch for notices of demonstrations because we live right by Bastille, which is *always* the start or the finish of a demonstration. It's bewildering when it happens because we sometimes can't get across the street or we aren't sure how peeved people are, and if they are going to get rowdy.

In other news, Suzy made a quick trip to Houston last week to get her new Visa pasted in her passport. Her employer had to re-doodle her work permit to a different type, which kicked off a storm of delightful paperwork, approvals, and a lovely trip to Houston. Suzy also had to get another physical with the French Immigration doctor, and yes, of course, her chest x-ray from 7 months ago was deemed to be 'too old', so she got a nice dose of radiation to go with it all. If the French Immigration Authorities are so concerned about Suzy's health, why do they keep shooting her full of radiation?

Suzy is greatful to be back in France, it was weird landing at CDG last week. Paris now feels like 'home', and the US feels like a foreign country.

Olympics in France

2006-02-28T20:47:00.000+01:00

So the Winter Olympics in Turin are all done. The Olympics are a fascinating thing. We were lucky enough to get a cable channel on NOOS that was showing Olympics 24/7 for the whole thing. They showed lots of everything, and very little commentary. I guess I didn't realize how 'dolled up' our US olympics coverage was with lots of time spent showing newscasters and interviews. And ours of course had running commentary in French, which works pretty well for sports stuff. We also saw it from a non-US point of view, meaning that the coverage didn't seek out every American performance to show, it also didn't seem to focus on catching every French performance. And pretty much zero medal ceremonies were shown.

Globalization ...and Rugby

2006-02-25T20:26:00.000+01:00

We have an amazing amount of international flavor outside our front door. Today Sarah and I left our Paris apartment and eat lunch at a Japanese grill at Bastille. We then walk to our neighborhood Scottish pub where we watch the France vs. Italy Rugby game while sipping British beer and cider. Afterwards on the way home, we stop at the American store called 'Thanksgiving' and buy overpriced microwave popcorn. All of this is within a 10 minute walk of the apartment.

So back to the Rugby. Some of you know that I tend to make fun of American football (is it the brown oblong ball, or the one with polka dots?). Sarah and I have gotten into watching Rugby here. It's an incredibly fast paced game with these monstrous players who act like they will be fed to the lions if they lose. The ball keeps moving, none of this constant stopping every 5 seconds to 'huddle' or restart a new play. And the players don't look like the Michelin man buried under protective padding. It really makes American football look like a bunch of sissies. Harumph!

Chenonceau

2006-02-22T07:54:00.000+01:00

Another chateau we toured. This one spans a river. In the 1500s it was a gift to Diane of Poitiers from the king of France. She was the mistress of king Henri II. This made Catherine de Medici, the queen, jealous. After the king died in a jousting accident, Catherine threw out the king's mistress, and took over Chenonceau for herself. Harumph!

Since this place was designed by women (everybody who moved in liked to add on), it has a nice comfortable feel to it. Chambord has a "I am King, hear me Roar" feel to it. Chenonceau's rooms are comfortably sized, with well placed windows looking over the river. Perhaps "I am Martha Stewart, hear me Roar"? I bet it is a knockout view in summer because it was really nice even in the dead of winter.

Chambord

2006-02-20T07:31:00.000+01:00

We spent the weekend in the Loire River Valley doing some chateaux hopping.

This is Francois I winter hunting palace, Chambord. As you can see from the size of people walking up to it, this place is *big*!

There is a terrace on the top floor that allows you to circle around the dozens and dozens of fireplace chimneys, it is meant to be a viewing platform for watching the hunt. The forest that surrounds it is roughly the size of central Paris. Inside there is a huge double helix staircase at the center, and oversized 'designed to intimidate you' rooms. Francois I built it, but only spent 29 nights in it.

Place des Vosges

2006-02-11T11:13:00.000+01:00

One of the places that's a few blocks from our house is Place des Vosges, the oldest square in Paris. These are some pics from it. The covered walkways extend around the inside of the square on all 4 sides, with many funky art shops (including the one with poofie fish). In the middle are nice grassy areas, which are having their winter rest (repos hivernal). The French don't put up a sign saying "Stay off the grass", they put up a sign saying "The grass is resting". With that, the reader infers that she should leave the poor tired grass alone, and sit elsewhere. Generally at any one time in the summer, about half the grass is "resting" in Place des Vosges, the other half can be used for picnics. The pic in the lower left is of one side of Place des Vosges. All 4 sides are done in the same style.

I took these this morning on our Pain Chocolat run. We've decided that the best Pain Chocolat close by is the bakery on rue St. Paul with blue trim outside. The regular Pain Choco is the best there, the supersized one just isn't as good. I started swimming again, so this morning's Pain Chocolat was guilt free (tasted even better!).

Museum Roundup

2006-02-10T16:01:00.000+01:00

We've visited some of the lesser known museums recently, some of them are quite good.

Cluny - Museum of Middle Ages. Lots of different things from Middle Ages, including famous "Lady with Unicorn" set.
Museum of Letters and Manuscripts- This place was fun. Letter from 1350, several from kings in the 1400s, letter from Catherine Medici, Albert Einstein, Mozart, Chopin, etc. etc. etc., and a special exhibit on Jules Verne. Best of all it was deserted, so Sarah and I got to toodle around in peace and quiet.
Foundation of Henri Cartier-Bresson - photography exhibit.
Willy Ronis - photographer of Paris in 1930-1950. Free exhibit in Hotel de Ville. Interesting people shots.
Musee du Luxembourg- We blew this one off after we saw the line going around the block. But the exhibit we want to see will be here til March, so hopefully we'll get to see it. The Philips Collection is here from Washington, since it's home in Washington is being remodeled.
Musee Marmottan - fantastic Monet collection donated by Monet's son when he died. Definitely recommended. We were also lucky enough to stumble on a special Camille Claudel (student/fling of Rodin) sculpture exhibit while we were there.

Homeless in Paris

2006-02-02T21:07:00.000+01:00

Well, not really. Not homeless yet, anyway. I wanted to write about the different relationship Parisiens have with their homeless community than we seem to in Austin. I'm wondering if this is a big city vs. smaller city thing, if it's a European thing for cities of all sizes, or if it's just a Paris thing.

Parisiens will walk up to and talk to their homeless. The homeless people here stake out a regular spot. There is always the same guy with his entertaining puppet next to the grocery store, the true wino on the other side of the grocery store.

People actually approach the homeless here, in Austin we seem to work hard to not see the guy with the sign at the busy intersection. Maybe it's the pedestrian big city that brings us closer, we have no car doors that we can lock. I find myself once again challenging knee-jerk American reactions, and losing stereotypes and fears I've had since I can remember.

There are also homeless that have been homeless a long time, they choose to live that way. Two women sit on opposite sides of rue St. Antione. A woman who lives in the neighborhood said they have been there for 16 years! Every night, the Red Cross of Paris shows up on rue St. Antoine, passing out food to them.

There is a homeless guy in Place des Vosges. Place des Vosges is the oldest square in Paris, with beautiful covered walkways surrounding it. There's a square with nice fountains, and playgrounds. Sarah and I had a champagne picnic here when we first moved in. A reasonable apartment on Place des Vosges will cost over 1 million euros. But the homeless guy is camped out with mattresses under the archways, just hanging out. While it must really stink to be homeless, this guy has managed to find one of the most beautiful places in Paris to be homeless. Beats the heck out of sitting at a busy intersection of the 183 access road in Austin.

The true wino can get a bit angry sometimes, but today there was some guy waiting for the bus, sitting there talking to him. People are giving them coins, or giving them an extra pastry they purchased for petit dejeuner (breakfast).

Oh, the pic is from the Mayor's pad. The Mayor of Paris has a 10,000 sq ft apartement in City. I wanted to post another pic, and I don't have one appropriate for the post. Nice digs, Mr. Mayor.

Chinese New Years in Paris

2006-01-29T21:51:00.000+01:00

Saturday night we went out to celebrate one of our friend's Birthday. She actually celebrates for an entire month, but that's for another post. We all met at a Chinese restaurant hidden away over in the 12th. It was our first time to have Chinese food since we left Austin last summer.

It also happened to be Chinese New Years, and the placed was packed.

There were 12 of us, and I can't believe how much I ate (and drank ). Plates of food slowly trickled out of the kitchen, giving us plenty of time to enjoy them. The mostly Asian crowd was getting wilder and wilder as the evening progressed. And the guest of honor is an Aussie, which of course means that we were also gettting wilder and wilder.

We ate and drank for 4 hours:

celery and calimari salad
beef and pepper salad
pancakes filled with porc and vegtables with a yummy sauce
steamed dumplings
shrimp stir fried with peas
lamb with whole cumin seeds
sweet and sour chicken
a really spicey soup/stew thing

I think the waiter developed carpal tunnel syndrome from opening so many bottles of wine.

Dinner was really good, we will definitely go back there. And true to their form, our friends had everyone over to their apartment after dinner, where we polished off plenty of champagne.

All in all, a very nice night. We even met some new people, which is good for us. It can be a little isolating here away from all our Austin friends, so meeting fun people definitely helps that.

All Photos, All the Time

2006-01-23T22:01:00.000+01:00

We've started placing photo albums at:
http://suzyinparis.free.fr

Enjoy!

I want this job!

2006-01-22T15:22:00.000+01:00

Another wonderful Sunday morning in Paris. We enjoyed clear skies on our walk along the Seine this morning.

These are Paris river firefighters, they are out zooming around the river playing with their boat that has a fire hose attached. They try to aim for the red boat as it zooms around them. Looked like fun to me. Their office is a nice looking houseboat right at the tip of Ile de la Cite. Sweeet.

We timed our walk just right, as we got to the river, church bells were ringing on both sides, and we were in front of Notre Dame right as its bells started ringing. Oh, and we undid all the goodness of taking a 90 minute walk by having a Nutella Crepe as we finished the walk.

Snacking on a nutella filled crepe in front of Notre Dame on a georgeous day and listening to the bells go crazy. Can you say sensory overload?

How many stars in the neighborhood?

2006-01-18T20:35:00.000+01:00

How many *Michelin* stars, that is. We live in the gastronomic center of the Universe, or at least that's what the Michelin France guide tells me. We can actually walk to two different 3 star restaurants ( 3 is the most you can get, and there aren't that many of them). A chef commited suicide a few years back when he lost a star, so people take this stuff seriously.

Unfortunately, people are also willing to pay to eat in Michelin 3 star restaurants. They are actually willing to pay a lot. A whole lot. Unfortunately more than we feel comfortable with. Maybe we'll work up to a big splurge at Tour d'Argent, which has been around for several hundred years, has a smashing view of Notre Dame, and a wine cellar of several hundred thousand bottles. Or we might try L'Ambroise over in Place des Vosges.

But for now, we subscribe to zagat.com, and try to find some fun places in their "best buys" section. Eating out here is really fun when you find a good place off the beaten path.

Divert all traffic from CDG on Sunny weekend days!

2006-01-15T12:26:00.000+01:00

I woke up to another clear sunny day, and made it out for some more picture taking. I just wish I could convince CDG airport to divert traffic, to get rid of contrails in the sky.

Sunday morning is very enjoyable in Paris on the streets. Very few people are out, and they close the road next to the Seine, allowing rollerbladers, cyclists, and pedestrians to use it. It is a joy to walk along, with views of the river and bridges that you usually don't get.

This photo is taken on the opposite side of Il de la Cite, it's a closeup of Pont Neuf ( named "New Bridge", yet is the oldest bridge in Paris) taken from River level. They are doing an extensive cleaning an rebuilding of the bridge, as you can see, it's pristine on this side. They are still working on the other side, it's not slated to be done until late 2007.

Another Sunny Saturday Pic

2006-01-14T17:34:00.000+01:00

I took this walking along the Seine. The booksellers line the street, and were all out selling today, since the streets were packed with Parisians with cabin fever ( well, not really cabin fever, because you can always go out and do something somewhere in Paris no matter what the weather is like). There was finally a break in the line of booksellers, allowing us to get a nice view of Notre Dame and snag a few shots. yes, I did use a polarizing filter

Sunny Saturday

2006-01-14T17:24:00.000+01:00

We had a nice warm Saturday this weekend, which is unusual. Sarah and I are both used to full Texas sun, and things can be a bit grey and cold in Paris in the winter. I'm not complaining, everything else about this place more than makes up for it.

Anyway, the weather brought out crowds of people, including the "performance artist" here. He's a constant fixture on the bridge between Ile de la Cite and Ile St. Louis. Only in Paris would some guy do bicycle tricks with classical music blaring. His grand finale is riding a tiiiiiiiiiiny yellow bike, which you can see in the lower left of this photo.

Say Fromage!

2006-01-14T17:10:00.000+01:00

This cheese shop is on Ile St. Louis, on the road that divides the island in half down the middle. The French take their cheese *very* seriously. France has a bazillion different cheeses, some of them resemble fungus science experiments. Many of them are quite pungent. Suzy is working her way towards appreciating some of the more...uhhh....flavorful ones.

Brugge revisited

2006-01-10T17:17:00.000+01:00

Another photo from a trip last Fall. This one from the canal-lined city of Brugge in Belgium. You definitely need a tripod when visiting this place, wonderful reflections of lit buildings at night.

Monet's Gardens

2006-01-10T17:08:00.000+01:00

Here's a pic from our trip to Giverny. We visited in August, when it was a riot of flower blooms. I want to go back with my new toy (Canon Digital Rebel XT SLR camera).

I've been without a highspeed connection at home, which means I've only been able to post text since we arrived in France. Thank the Godess that is over, this place is too beautiful to describe in text.

Nice in Nice

2005-12-07T13:28:00.000+01:00

We had Thanksgiving in Nice on the Coast of Southern France. It was a relaxing trip. We did have to juggle our travel to fly down, because the French railroad was striking...again.

We splurged at stayed at an old historic hotel, Hotel Negresco. Dome in the lobby designed by Gustav Eiffel, and crystal chandelier was originally made for Czar Nicholas II, but was never delivered because of the Russian Revolution. Beyond that the hotel was a little ...uhhh... odd. Lots of modern art crammed into quaint old-Europe style interior. Bathroom remodel run amuck with glittering gold matching sinks, tub, and bidet.

Since Nice is only a few miles from Italy, we took advantage of good Italien food, we even ate in an Italien restaurant for Thanksgiving with our friends from Austin Rob and Brian, who happened to be driving into Nice that day. Fantastic lasagne for Thanksgiving dinner. Well, it worked for me.

The rest of the weekend involved mostly strolling on Promenade de Anglais, and watching the waves in the powder blue ocean. It was pretty chilly, except the last day was a georgeous clear blue sunny day.