last of the pictures

Okay, here are the rest, including the pictures from the Money gardens!

http://picasaweb.google.com/mckeown09

Thanks!

-Steph

quick note about pictures

We're still working on getting all the pictures up here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/scarlson09

But I also wanted to say that if anyone wants to print any of our pictures or anything, don't use the versions on the website. They've been shrunk so that they upload faster and I can fit more on the page. Email me if you would like any to have, they are all about 4MB each, so huge files, probably large enough to print a decent size. So just let me know which numbers, if any, and I'll be happy to send the original files. Again, thanks for reading, and I hope everyone has seen and enjoyed at least some of the pictures (I realize there are a lot!)

My email is scarlson09@gmail.com.

-Steph

Day 30 - last full day in Paris

Today was bittersweet - of course we're sad to leave, but we're excited to get back home to family and friends (and English-speaking, and Mexican food, and Target...). We leisurely enjoyed our day and finished up everything we needed to do and planned out all our packing. We are bringing home a fair amount more than what we came with, though a lot of it is light. I decided not to bring home any cheeses though, which was a tough decision. Mostly I just wasn't too specific on what I wanted, not really knowing what can only be found here, and I wouldn't be able to decide on just one or two (since I probably couldn't afford more!) But Andy, thank you for the advice, I do appreciate it! The next trip I make to Europe, this first one as a real "adult" (as in, having a career and making enough of my own money) whenever that may be, I'll spend a lot of time and money hunting down wines and cheeses and shipping them home. Next time, I'll shop at the department stores. Next time, I'll eat at all the best restaurants, including the Jules Verne at the Eiffel Tower. On this trip however, we had a blast finding the bargains, and hell, just being under 26 in order to get into just about everywhere cheaper. This trip, we bought our groceries and snacked on baguettes and pastries all day (I dd NOT lose any weight, like I did last time). This trip, we spent a lot of time walking, just enjoying the free sights and sounds of the city. This trip, we lived more like locals.

Today, we made our fifth and final stop at Berthillon. I've had eleven scoops of cold, creamy goodness (one day I had a triple). I will miss it dearly. Even my beloved Yogurtland cannot compete. We wrapped up our shopping, buying some of the old fashioned French advertisements and prints of Paris landmarks for our sparse apartment walls back in Tucson. Also, we had to trek up to the Gare du Nord to get our Eurail passes stamped. We bought tarts one last time at our favorite little patisserie just downstairs. The girl who works there greeted us by holding up a baguette when we stepped through the door, since it's our usual stop at that time of day. We ate dinner at one of the only restaurants on our block we haven't tried, Cafe Chouchou. They have a great menu deal, though we didn't realize how great a deal it was until we got our heaping plates of couscous, chicken, and vegetables with all the seasonings. It was great, especially so with the happy hour pints of Stella Artois. It's funny that here in France, all the bars and cafes have a "Happy Hour" special, and it is actually "Happy Hour" in English, like there's no French equivalent. C'est Happy Hour.

So now we are all packed up, ready to grab a croissant in the morning and take the RER to the airport. Tomorrow afternoon, we will be in Montreal, and then Friday, back home at last.

Thanks to everyone who read the blog; we put a lot of time into it, and we appreciate knowing that you all are enjoying it!

Until next time,

Steph

Day 29

It’s getting towards the end of the trip, so we’re trying to tie up loose ends and just finish everything that we wanted to do, things to see, things we want to get to bring home, etc. We started out craving one more time the delicious pitas at Man’ouche just nearby, so that made a great lunch. Next, we walked over to the Bastille to see if we could get some last minute Opera tickets. We saw the Proust ballet at the Opera Garnier (the old, classic one that inspired “Phantom of the Opera”), but we didn’t get a chance to see the newer (20 years old) Opera Bastille, with its great modern architecture. They don’t do open, self guided tours (at least during the summer), only the more expensive guided tours that only happen on select days and times. There hasn’t been anything playing there for the last couple weeks, but a new show just started there last week, “King Roger,” a Polish opera. There were tickets available, but the cheapest at 35 euro, a bit much for us to do, especially since we really just wanted to see the building. Oh well.

Next we hopped the metro to my favorite place, Le Grand Epicerie, again. We needed one more fix of the best macarons in town, and I wanted to get some herbes de Provence for my mom. On the way back to the apartment after that venture, we stopped at Les Halles to check out France’s most populat electronics store, fnac. Don’t ask me how to pronounce it, I haven’t heard it spoken! It was sort of fun to see the differences and similarities between it and its American counterparts. And also fun to see the computers with European keyboards. On our last trip, we didn’t bring a computer, so whenever we sent an email, it was in an internet café somewhere, and it took twice as long to type because we had to reorient ourselves to the letters being in different places. One of the many reasons (including this blog!) I’m happy we brought a laptop this time around.

After a nap (the last two days were long and tiring) we decided on one more Croque McDo for dinner on this trip, and lounged around eating in front of the Pompidou Center just before the sun was setting. Tomorrow is our last full day in Paris. The blog won’t be as interesting, since tomorrow will entail a lot of cleaning and packing. But anyway…

-Steph

28

22 June, 2009

Today was one we’d been excited for through most of the trip: the Monet gardens. After stocking up on a variety of pastries for the train ride, we headed to Gare Saint Lazare and bought our ticket to Vernon, the closest station to Giverny. It’s only about forty-five minutes by train. To get to Giverny, where the actual Monet locations are, you can take some stupid bus or shuttle or whatever, or you can rent bikes! One guess what we chose. The bar right next to the train station at Vernon probably makes most of their money by renting out bikes. They’re certainly not state of the art, but they have two wheels, a seat, and a basket at least. We get a map to guide us there, but the directions are basically, go straight until you cross the river, then take the second right. Past the river, it’s bike path all the way. It’s nice to not have to worry about cars, and be able to see the greenery and all the houses and B&B’s. (Mom, you would love these bed & breakfasts! I think you and Dad should look into retiring here and running one.) The whole trip is only 4km, but we had to stop a couple times to fix the chain on my bike, it kept slipping off the gears.

Once there, it was only a short line to get in to Monet’s house and gardens, and I was surprised how relatively inexpensive it was, only 4.50 euro each. We toured the house first, and it was nice that there weren’t too many people visiting. I was even by myself in the kitchen for a minute! I touched the stove, even though you’re not supposed to. The house is all nice, bright, spring time colors, with windows in just about every room overlooking the garden, and a large but cozy dining room painted daffodil yellow, and a sky blue kitchen with blue and white tiles. In addition to reproductions of many of Monet’s works on the walls, there were tons of Japanese paintings, including many by Hokusai, a favorite of ours.

The gardens are large; though nowhere near the size of some of the others we’ve seen (Versailles, Jardin des Plantes). Still, we spend a few hours walking around and taking pictures, enjoying the scenery. There are, however, a ton of school groups there, so occasionally you have to duck to the side while a gaggle of six year olds go parading past. There are two separate gardens, the one by the house with rows upon rows of flowers (roses and poppies were primarily in season and prominent); and the water garden, with the famous bridges, water lilies, and weeping willow. There are paths through both, and more benches than we’ve seen at any other garden – very conducive to painting.

After we’d seen everything at the gardens, we exited back onto Rue Claude Monet, and looked through some of the smaller gardens, restaurants, boutiques and galleries along the road. There was a pretty field of wildflowers at one point. Getting back on our bikes, we stopped at the church of Giverny, though we didn’t go in, but we did see Monet’s tomb where the artist and many of his family members are. Biking back to Vernon, the bikes worked fine, but we stopped a few times for photo opportunities of the countryside. We returned the bikes and caught a train back to Paris that put us in the city just around dinnertime. We took the metro back and stopped for Happy Hour again at Cavalier Bleu, on our corner in front of Pompidou. Again, Kyle had his chicken club sandwich and I had the quiche of the day, with some drinks. We really enjoy that restaurant, it’s a great place to hang out.

A note about our pictures: we’re already at album 6! We’ve taken a ridiculous amount. So many in fact, that we’ve reached our allowed storage limit for the website. Bummer. But, we’re trying to find a way around it, maybe we’ll start a new account, but we’ll post whenever the Monet pictures are up, it truly was a spectacular place.

-Steph

Day 27 6-21

Today we tried to get up early (trying slowly but surely to get back into the swing of things for normal time schedules and such) and got ready to go out and grab a quick bite to eat a restaurant we had seen earlier that had a very good menu. It was on the other side of the river, past Notre Dame, but it was an easy walk and along the way we were able to pick out a few decent spots of where other bands would be playing later on in the day. Since it was the summer equinox, there were city wide festivities planned that had many orchestras, choirs, and bands of all genres (and I mean ALL genres) scattered throughout the city to play music in hour or more increments to the public for free. Most of them didn't start until five o'clock at night, but we were able to catch a glimpse of some spots just near us, and a few on the other side of the river as we went to lunch.

After lunch we head over to the Musee d'Orsay, which was the first museum of the trip, which we saw on our second day in Paris. There were a few items, now that it was towards the end, that we had wanted to look for at the gift shop while we still had the chance. We took the route that followed the Seine deeper into the city, casually browsing the multiple tourist gift shops and old book stands that are set up along the road on the weekends. After the gift shop, we head back through the Jardin du Tuileries and tried to enjoy a brief break at the large fountain in the gardens. I say try only because the wind was blowing hard enough to spray the fountain water with it, causing just about everyone in the nearby seats to get drizzled on.

Once we were back to the apartment we looked up as many locations and groups as we could to get an idea of where a lot of them would be, and what types of music were playing near us. We knew that Notre Dame had an organ recital open to the public and we were anxious to go there, for at least a few songs, before it got too late. Luckily, after walking through the nearby streets and seeing a bunch of different bands (late 90's rock/pop was very very popular), we went to Notre Dame for the organ recital and stayed for two pieces. The organ, and the acoustics, are awesome to hear in the cathedral. Words can't describe how powerful the organs all, and the sound produced definitely lives up to their large statue, as this one in particular covered up most of the west wall in the cathedral. The other organ we heard playing in this trip was the one at St. Eustache, which is also the closest cathedral to our location, and is known for having the best acoustics out of all of Paris (and thus probably France).

We spent the rest of the night exploring other parts of Paris, trying to stay local, but still adventurous, and ran into many mixed scenes of rock, pop, and techno. It was lots of fun to be able to see everyone having a good time without any real troubles in any way. (which is good because in the beginning of the festivities we did come across a group of about 10 police men, all in their full gear with what looked like modernized battle arm, and riot shields. Luckily they were just hanging out, and we never had to see them in action).

At the end of the night, with sore feet once again we retired to the apartment for some frozen pizza and prepared for the next day ahead.

- Kyle

Day 26

Day 26

This morning, for Saturday brunch, we started out for a place mentioned under the best sandwich shops in one of our guidebooks, Le Pain Quotidien. It’s not too far from our apartment, and when we get there, we see a short line out the door. It turns out to be not so much what we expected, we’d thought it was more of a counter style sandwich shop, but it’s a small restaurant specializing in sandwiches and breakfast, and it’s organic. After only about ten minutes, we get a table, or rather seats at one. There are individual tables outside, but inside it’s all one big long table that seats probably 25 or 30. It’s lots of fun, and smells great and there’s all these assorted jams on the table for the bread. However, we’re in more of a lunch mood, so we order tartines, open faced sandwiches. They arrive, five triangles of bread spread with toppings, and vegetables (lettuce, cucumber, tomato) on the side to pile on at your leisure. Kyle’s was beef, basil and parmesan, and mine was a delicious, herby tuna with roasted red peppers and olive “paste” like a fine tapenade. It was great! Topped off with a mint tea for me, and a chocolat chaud for Kyle, and it was one of my favorite places to eat so far; it’s a pity we happened upon it so late in the trip.

It started to rain a bit outside, but we were headed to the Picasso Museum, also not too far away, in the Marais district. For some reason that we’re still not sure of, it was free today. Score! Haha, we hypothesized that perhaps whoever runs the ticket booth just called in sick? Who knows. Anyway, the museum is a converted mansion, so the layout is interesting, not just one big hall of rooms, but lots of smaller rooms that weave through hallways and through the levels of the house. I guess Picasso’s heirs decided to donate his works, as to not be so indebted with inheritance taxes. Anyway, it was all ordered pretty chronologically, something I like because I enjoy how the paintings tell a sort of life story, showing the progression of style. There were also a few by some of Picasso’s friends, like Matisse, Miro, and Renoir. Not too shabby! It was a nice way to spend our afternoon. However, there were no pictures allowed, so don’t look for any except for an exterior of the building. There are no signs to this effect. The watchdog people who sit in the corner of each room just like to yell at people, “No pictures!” I wonder if they just get to decide which days pictures are allowed and which days they aren’t. I also wonder how many such people are employed in this position in Paris. How many people get paid (or perhaps volunteer) to it in a corner and babysit paintings and sculptures? How many in the Louvre alone? We’ve been to a lot of museums on this trip, these things start to pop into your head.

After that, we made another pilgrimage to Berthillon, the fourth time I believe (oh no, I’m losing track), stopping along the way to buy a cheese grater shaped like the Eiffel Tower. You can find these, and many other cheeky, amusing household items at Pylones, on Ile Saint Louis. At Berthillon, between the two of us we had cherry, hazelnut, tiramisu, and vanilla. We have yet to find a flavor that’s not good, and cherry is still my fave.

Heading back, we stop into Notre Dame, realizing that in all the times we’ve walked past it, we haven’t been in (not since last trip anyway). So we went in, and through the hordes of visitors, we could tell that a mass was going on! That was cool to see. We heard the organ a bit too. Still though, and even though I’m not a religious person at all, it really surprised and irked me how disrespectful some of the visitors were of the mass going on. The cathedral wouldn’t be there to visit were it not for its religious purposes. Still though, most people were making no effort to lower their voices, some even on cell phones! How ridiculous is that? It’s an amazing church though, the architecture is incredible. We’ve seen a lot of great churches on this trip too.

After that, I bought another postcard that I wanted to mail, but it was in the evening, so we figured most of the post offices would be closed. But on the way home, we went into the Pompidou, since they sell stamps and have a mailbox. When we got there, we saw something going on in the lower level, which is open to the main floor. We looked over the side to see a band setting up, and the floor all decorated in colorful electrical tape, with people still making designs along the edges. It’s a huge space, so this was cool to see. The band, called The Bad Dogs, was a three person group, with an awesome singer and a killer girl guitarist. They did covers of American rock songs, it was funny and cool how well the girl sang English with no accent. The space, called the “Playground” will open officially in January as a place dedicated to teenagers to hang out and have a creative space, which I thought was awesome. So all in all, a good night to swing by the Pompidou randomly, and also a performance filled day all around. Just walking around throughout the day, we saw a guy paint a portrait of Obama upside down in six minutes; a guy balance a bicycle on his chin; a guy playing the piano on the sidewalk; a whole band, probably thirty piece, out in the park behind Notre Dame; and a guy making giant bubbles.

We finished off the night with dinner back at the apartment. I took the leftover ratatouille from a couple nights ago, heated it up on the stove with some tomato sauce, garlic, and fresh parsley, then tossed it on top of some rotini. It was pretty good! But then again, what do you expect? ;)

-Steph