On the Road Again

Au Revoir, Paris


Our last night in Paris was a celebration of our 40th wedding anniversary.  We had reservations, a must for most places even at this time of the year.    The restaurant had about a dozen tables, half of which had English speaking patrons.  The good news was that the other 50% were French.  We both ordered the Tasting Menu because we  have had good luck doing that in quite a few other restaurants (in the US).   We were expecting to have tiny plates of this and that.  Instead, we had what seemed like full-sized plates.  I ordered some wonderful sounding things:  Spring roll with crab and shredded cod for my two starters, then I ordered a slow cooked pork and a deep fried raviolo with a side of fish as my "mains". 

I was more than surprised when the spring roll turned out to be a sushi roll with raw crab and the usual vegetables in nori.  I figured it probably wouldn't kill me to eat it, so I did. 

Next up, the shredded cod.  Here was something that I would really like.  I could just picture it.  Well, not really.  It was raw cod, not even marinated:  not cheviche, raw cod.   I survived the crab, so I ate the raw cod.  I did not think it was wonderful -- I thought it was raw. I really prefer my animal products to be cooked first. 

Comfort was next, slow cooked pork.  I was back on track.  Very tasty, flaky soft, lovely.  Next up was the deep-fried raviolo (only one, so it's raviolo, not ravioli).  Since it was deep fried, I felt assured that it would, of necessity, be cooked.  Well, it was slightly cooked.  The shrimp inside it was barely warm, certainly not cooked.  The outside was fried, true, but it was not cooked all the way through.  The piece of fish which was mysteriously served with it was cooked perfectly.  I tasted like monkfish, one of my favorites.

For the life of me, I can't figure out how we managed to pick a restaurant that specialized in raw fish.  I never connect French food with raw fish.  There was nothing about their website that would have indicated that.  I'm still alive, so the raw fish didn't kill me, or even give me food poisoning.  But, I would have had a much better experience if the fish had been passed over a flame.  The major success of the evening was that I managed to prevent Larry from taking photos in the restaurant -- a favorite occupation of his.  however, he did take this picture of me while we were waiting in front of the restaurant.

The Dordogne

The next morning, Monday, Sept 27, we left Paris (sigh!) for what might be the last time.  It's getting harder and harder for Larry to navigate city streets, subway steps etc.  So, we might find that we are not able to go to Paris again.  I have enjoyed our five trips to Paris and consider myself unbelievably lucky to have experienced a city so absolutely beautiful.  That neither one of us can communicate in French beyond buying a baguette hasn't been much of a problem.   Sometimes it's created funny circumstances when sales clerks chuckle at us, but we've never been treated rudely.

We picked up our rental car just a short walk from our apartment, then picked up our bags stored at the apartment for the moment and then navigated our way (for better or worse) through the streets of Montmartre and onto the peripheral road on our way to the superhighway.  Whew, we made it.  Then all day of driving so that we could arrive at our "gite" (apartment to the rest of us) in the lovely countryside of the Dordogne region of southwestern France.  If I had done a little more homework about the area, I would have known that this is the very famous area called Perigord, which is the home of truffles, foie gras and the absolute best french chefs in the world.  Practically all of the top tier (not the Food Network type) of chefs come from here.  As soon as I figured that out, my interest in the area increased exponentially.  I am definitely a foodie.

We got here to this tiny, tiny village (not even a village, really) about 7:00.  We were a bit tired from being on the road all day.  We had stopped at the grocery store in a town nearby on our way, so we were provisioned well enough to have some dinner.  We got accustomed to the gite and settled in to read the slew of tourist brochures left by previous renters.

Here's the view from the patio of our gite, overlooking the magnificent valley below.

Yesterday, we drove to a wonderful little town, called Les Eyzies.  This town is literally at the bottom of a huge rock formation.  The buildings are built right into the rock.  This entire area is entrenched in archeological sites.  There are many caves here with cave paintings and/or carvings.  Some of these artifacts were discovered only a hundred years ago, yet they go back to at least the Magdalanian period (15,000 -9,000 BC).  Restaurants and gift shops name themselves after the period. 

Some of the caves are really quite high up, and as of now, I haven't figured how ancient people would have been able to access them.  Probably I will figure this out when we go to the archeological museum, which I have heard is really worth the visit.  What amazes me is that it is thought that these cave drawings had some relationship to religious practices.  To have thoughts about a higher power is a relatively advanced activity.  I did not know that these prehistoric people could imagine a higher power.  Well, that's what the guidebooks say.

Here's a picture of the town.

Being that it was lunch time, everything except the restaurants and the gift shops were closed.  So, we had lunch.  The idea here is to have the "menu du jour", a set lunch with three or four courses.  In some cases, you have no idea what is being served that day, and in some cases, you can choose from  two or three menu items for each course.  I had cassolet for the first time.  I had wanted to have this for many years after reading about it in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", but I never wanted to go through the steps to make it.  Not to mention that we don't have preserved duck legs at every local supermarket.  It was quite good.  Now that I've had it, I might not need to have it again.  Basically, it's French style Boston Baked Beans.

In the afternoon, we went to one of the many caves around here.  The one we tried to go to was full for the day and we were informed that we would  have to make reservations , and that the next available reservations were in 15 days.  Somehow, I don't really think that the reservations clerk had her English down pat, but maybe it really was 15 days' wait.  At any rate, in 15 days, we will be in the French Riviera, quite a long way from here.  So, we went to a less popular cave a couple of miles away.  Obviously, the reason that it is less popular is that it is also less interesting.  This cave, Combarelles, had the carvings, not paintings.  The cave that Larry really wants to see is at least an hour away from here, probably more.  So, we may not get there.  (Also, I'm not so thrilled about caves.  It's not claustrophobia, I just don't think that they are very interesting).

On our way back to our gite, we passed through Sarlat, the town that most tourists come here to see.  It is an unbelievable medieval town.  I quickly found a parking spot smack in the middle of town.  Little did I know that it was the biggest street in town.  It was one lane wide, with another lane, which changed every few feet from one side to the other, for parking and dining tables to share in a strange system of ceramic blocks in the street to determine the exact use.  It was quite strange.  We were looking for the bank, which was easy to find.  Then, having a little more time on the meter, we wandered around and nearly got lost in the maze of little lanes with the ancient buildings still standing.  It didn't take much imagination to visualize the old town with a mix of vendors and their carts, hawkers of various kinds,  a few dirty, shoeless kids begging in the street and the usual allotment of stray cats.  This town could be emptied of modern people and used as a movie set with precious little cosmetic redecorating of the shops.  The lanes were cobble stones, the buildings were cheek-by-jowl and the whole thing looked basically unchanged in about 500 years, give or take a couple.  I'm hoping that we have time to go back and stroll around a little more.  It was the end of the day and we were getting tired, so we didn't stay very long.  This is a lovely town to stay in.  Even though we had heard of trouble parking there, we didn't have any trouble at all.  Of course, we weren't there on a market day. 

Here is Sarlat.

Today is Wednesday, the 29th.  I was very sick last night, so we got a bit of a late start this morning.  We dallied at the gite for a while, reading email and the such.  By the time that we left and got to our destination in a nearby town (Salignac) to find a post office, it was lunchtime.  We had a typical menu de jour.  Another great meal.  We had great fun walking around the town.  The ancient town is mixed right in with the more modern town.  The chateau here is in disrepair and closed to the public.  There are lots of piles of ruble, right next to fairly new houses.  The style here is to build new houses in just the same style and with the same materials as the ancient buildings.  The result is that everything blends very well.  There is no jarring juxtaposition of buildings from 1500 made of stone and buildings from 2000 made of glass or the like.  Even houses in the countryside blend. 

Here is the lovely town of Salignac.  I really liked this place.  If I was going to buy a house in Perigord, this would be the town.

All of those lessons that we learned in school about how medieval towns were built -- castle, workers' homes around the castle, farm around the castle, etc, -- all become real when you look at these towns.  There is always a walled castle (chateau), the surrounding out buildings for the tradesmen who were employed to build the castle, the church, the marketplace.  It's easier to understand the basic tenets of fortification and defense when you can see it up close.  I really enjoy walking around these old towns and imagining the various times that the town went through. 

Our expedition for the day was to go to the gardens at d'Eyrignac.  These are magnificently sculpted shrubs and trees.  I really enjoyed it. This is not necessarily one of the larger gardens, but it is well cared for.  The interesting thing to me is that even though the land and manor house have been continuously owned by the same family for 500 years (22 generations), the gardens are actually a modern construct.  The father (now deceased) of the current owner actually designed the gardens and provided the funds to build them.  These are private gardens, not part of the national trust for preservation of gardens and antiquities (I don't actually know the name of the trust).  To keep the gardens and manor house in the family, the family opened it to the public.  Signs posted said that it takes five full-time gardeners year round and that it costs 800,000 Euros a year to maintain.  It sounds like this just might be a break-even venture because the entrance fee is 9.50 Eu per person and they have 80,000 visitors a year.

Here are the gardens on a late afternoon in late September when the sun is lower in the sky and gives long shadows.

Serendipity

We are enjoying the apartment allowing us to have  lingering breakfasts and/or lunch in.  Yesterday, we didn't leave the apartment until  afternoon.  When we ventured out, we got off the Metro at Notre Dame and walked from there across the bridge on our way to the Luxembourg Garden, one of our favorite places.

On the way, winding around in our rather serpentine fashion, we encountered some crowd noise a few blocks off and an ambulance, siren blaring, racing towards it.  There has recently been a train strike over the change in the retirement age from 60 to 62 (poor babies!) so I thought that the noise might be related to some type of street demonstration or protest.

As we got closer, it was evident that the "noise" was actually music, or at least it claimed to be.  The crowd was under 30, mostly male and the music was thumping club music.  My assumption was that it was a gay pride parade, though it seemed pretty tame for that.   No wild costumes, no men stripped to the waist.  The parade consisted of many large trucks with the flat beds replaced with double decker arrangements that held lots of people, all moving to the music and a DJ at the end, spinning the noise.

Both the crowd, which really seemed spontaneous, and the participants on the trucks were young.  That is, except for a few of us past a certain age.  This man was not keen on music either.

My thought, exactly.  This parade turned out to be the 12th annual celebration of techno music sponsored by some of the music companies.  The police evidently thought that there might be some incidents because they had a decided presence at the intersections.

They didn't seem to be enjoying the festivities very much.  We just caught the tail-end of the parade, enough to see about three of these trucks go by.  They were quickly followed by a phalanx of big blue (police) and big green (sanitation)  vehicles.

It's interesting what you find when you are not looking for it.  From there, we were onward to our original mission of going the  garden.  The flowers there are looking a bit tired, but still lovely just the same -- a bit like an older woman.

It was a chilly, gray and intermittently dreary day yesterday.  Not a good day for taking photos.  None the less, here is the garden with the French Senate building in the background.  This is a lovely place.  I like to just go and sit and people-watch.

The local kids were having a great time, despite the clouds and periodic raindrops.  There was a concession for renting miniature sailboats.  They were not radio operated, but instead were propelled by use of long bamboo sticks to push them into the water.  From there, it was the job of the wind (of which we certainly had plenty) to move them around the basin.  Sometimes, the kids needed a bit of assistance to get them moving.  Here's a Dad providing technical assistance.  The boat took off and was across the basin in no time.

(sidebar:  take a look at the way the light plays on the water and you will see why water was easy for Renoir and Monet and so difficult for everyone else)


Today is our 40th anniversary.  We started the day by going this morning to the Museum of Montmartre, which happens to be conveniently located just across the street from our apartment.  I am so glad that we went.  It really explained the development of this area and all of the colorful people who lived here.  i chose this photo as characteristic of the place in general area because of the black cat.  A famous cafe opened here in the 1890's called Chat Noir. 

There is an iconic advertising poster of the place, done I believe (or at least in the style of) Toulouse Lautrec. Here are some posters that we saw.

 

Tonight, we are going to dinner on the left bank at a restaurant that doesn't post its prices on its website.  That makes me a little nervous.  However, we might not be around for the 50th, so we might as well live it up.

A day with Monet

Yesterday, we were headed off to a museum, as usual.  In the Metro station, we saw a poster for a Monet Exhibit that just opened this past weekend and goes through the end of December.  Being big fans of Monet, we decided to go there instead of any other place for the day.   The exhibt is at the Grand Palais (above), an exhibit space used only for special exhibits.  The other exhibit at the same time is art of the Moyen Age (middle ages).  I'm not a big fan of art from that time period, so we did not get a double ticket.

Here's Larry at the entrance:

We spend the entire afternoon there.  First, there was a two-hour waiting line (which turned out to be only 1 1/2 hours).  We didn't mind so much because we were delightfully entertained by a classical guitarist at the steps to the museum.  How could one possibly get tired of standing in line when one could hear Vivaldi guitar pieces?  Lovely.  I felt like I should be in Venice instead, and when I closed my eyes for a moment, I was.

The grounds around the Grand Palais contain an array of flowers that are still in bloom, even though this is the end of September.  They entertained the eye as the musician entertained the ear.

The exhibit itself was a wonder. It was well curated to start with his early work and explain the influences on his early style.  At that time, the current school of thought in painting was all dark colors, regardless of the time of day or subject matter and whether inside or out.  it was called the Barbizon school.  Lord only knows why they chose to use such a very dark palette.

No wonder Claude and the boys were considered to be "outsiders". 

It didn't take long before Monet began experimenting with sunlight.  The others at the time followed, and voila', a new school developed.  Thank goodness.  Otherwise, we would all still be looking at very dark still life paintings.  That's my idea of dull.

Here's the line as we were leaving at 5:00.  I was still a 2 hour wait.  Originally, we thought that we would just leave and go back later when the line died down.  When we came out, we realized that we would have still been waiting.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.  Just marvelous.  We were enthralled.



Same Time Zone, Different City

ON THE MOVE

Amsterdam was an interesting city, with a casual atmosphere that denied its status as a city, not just an interesting outpost of a city.  We liked the fact that you could get anywhere rather quickly, that the transportation was available in so many forms and in so many places and that there were coffee shops on every other corner.  We did not like the fact that transportatation was expensive, in fact, things in general were expensive.

The people were friendly, mostly all spoke at least passable English and many were so proficient as to be truly bilingual.  I was disappointed that there were not parks with flowers, but maybe they exhausted their flower budget on tulips in the spring and therefore the rest of the year the place looks a bit barren.  I read that the city has a budget of more than $2M for flowers, so I was expecting to see something.  Never the less, many private citizens stepped into the breach and provided colorful and lovely flowering plants at their windows, balconies and doorsteps.

Today we said goodbye to our houseboat lodgings and to the city of Amsterdam, knowing that we would probably not return.  Here is Larry outside the houseboat, baggage ready for the walk to the Metro station.

It seemed like a long walk to the station, mostly because we were dragging our bags behind us over the brick and cobble stone streets.  We found our way to Metro which quickly became crowded with morning rush hour foot traffic.  We got off at the bus station and just barely made the one bus of the day leaving to drive to Paris.  The driver spoke only French, so we had to rely upon other travellers to translate for us.  The drive was quite interesting (to me, anyway) as we drove through the Dutch countryside.  We saw windmills of both the old and the new varieties.  This windmill was facing the other direction. 

We also saw several wind farms along the way, not to mention a cooling tower for a nuclear energy plant.  I told Larry that that was where Homer Simpson worked, and he actually understood what I meant.  I was surprised.

We entered Belgium with a simple sign marker stating "Belgies 1 km".  That was it.  We zoomed by, the border being non-existent.  Whereas the countryside in Holland was full of canals, cows and sheep grazing and an occasional small city, the countryside in Belgium was undistinguished.  Mostly, it was hidden behind high berms lining the highway, making it difficult or impossible to see anything ever from our seats on the upper deck of the bus.

In three hours time from central Amsterdam, we were in the center of Brussels.  This is one city that I had always romanticized as being such a lovely old world city, one steeped in history and gorgeous architecture.  And, this is how I found the city:

It is a very modern city.  It looks like a financial hub of Europe with branches of all of the major international accounting firms prominently displaying their logos atop their buildings.  It has a lot of public art on display, mostly in the form of sculpture and water sculpture.  I found absolutely nothing interesting about this city at all.  It had no character, just sweeping glass buildings and office parks.  One advantage of taking the bus (aside from the much lower cost) was that we got to see other places along the way.  I cannot imagine ever wanting to go to Antwerp for example.  It is a huge over-grown shipping city, and very unattractive.

After a half-hour stop in Brussels for lunch and restroom breaks (40 cents!) we got back on the bus for the next and final stop -- Paris.  Dear, sweet Paris. 

It seemed like quite a long stretch before we got to the French border, but when we did, we were stopped by the border patrol, or whatever they are called in France.  The Police boarded the bus and asked everyone for identification.  For our troubles of digging out passports, we could at least have had them stamped.  This is technically our third country so far, and not a stamp yet.  That's a lot of money with nothing in the passport to show for it.  The Police must have been looking for someone because they seemed to be pulling cars over, all of which had very dark skinned men driving them.  I'm not sure what that might have been about.  Happenstance, maybe.

The French countryside was like driving through Kansas -- cornfields, cornfields and, yes, more cornfields.  Some of the corn had been harvested already and the rest was soon to follow.  In quite a few places, it looked as if there was a second crop planted, but I could not tell what it might have been.  Great time for an afternoon nap.

Finally, we drove past Charles DeGaulle airport and I knew that we could not be too far away -- about 30 miles or so.  After the airport, the suburbs started, then the city limits and voila', we were at the bus terminal.  The trip was not done because we still had to negotiate 2 subway lines and the Montmartre autobus to get to the corner of the street where we are staying.

The streets and shops all seem so familar from our last trip here three years ago with Jared and Evelyn for Heather and Chris's wedding.  It is very nice, indeed, to be back in Paris.  I vividly remember our first trip to Paris several years ago:  I stood on the Pont Neuf with tears of disbelief in my eyes that I was actually here in Paris.  I had never thought that possible before.  Now, this is our 5th trip. 

Our neighborhood for the rest of the week  -- Montmartre.

Tomorrow, croissants and coffee in our studio apt and then a day of visiting favorite places.


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Dead Tired, But We're Here

Amsterdam

We arrived in Amsterdam yesterday, (Monday) to a very cloudy, chilly day with intermittent rain.  As usual, our plane got in early in the morning and our lodgings were not available until early afternoon.  We are always desperately in need of sleep after an overnight flight and then getting in at 2:00 am eastern standard time.  We have a picture of me dozing in front of the Orangerie in Paris while waiting for our hotel a few years ago.

We made the best of it, but we were just so tired that the day didn't really exist for us.  We left our bags, luckily, and set out to see something of the neighborhood and get ourselves somewhat acquainted with the local streets.  It seemed like hours and hours before we could return, but actually it was only about 3 hours. 

We wandered around a bit, taking in the once-a-week street market which was just around the corner from our accommodations.  It went for blocks and blocks.  It was not anything like the markets in Paris, Florence or the English countryside that we have seen.  It was tents covering vendors selling everything from "collectibles" to underwear, curtains, linens, various types of clothing for adults and children, and blocks and blocks of yard goods and findings. 

We stopped and had lunch and then found our way back to check in.  All this time, it was raining off and on and my umbrella was packed in my luggage.  We were not the happiest of campers at the moment.

Our accommodations that Larry booked for us are in a houseboat on one of the couple hundred canals in Amsterdam.  Like so many houseboats, it's a little bit like an oyster -- ugly on the outside and nice on the inside.  This is a studio at the end of a houseboat.  It is defininittely not as luxurious as the houseboat that we had in Paris for Larry's 60th birthday, but it suffices. 

When we first arrived, we were chilled through and through from the chilly, rainy day.  We collapsed on the bed and sofa and turned the heat up to warm up and get necessary rest.  Here's a picture of the view from our dining table as we look out the window.

This morning, as we were having our breakfast, we were joined by a group of male and female swans looking for their breakfast as well.  In the time that it took us to  figure out how to open the sliding door and feed them, they had gone farther along the buffet line.  Here they are before the moved on, as seen through the porthole of our studio.

Our main event of the day was to go to the Van Gogh Museum, which is about 3 miles or so from the houseboat.  We took the tram from around the corner of our place to the corner of the museum.  We thought that we should save our walking for the museum itself -- a wise move. 

The museum was a bit of a disappointment.  We have seen more comprehensive exhibits elsewhere in special shows.  The iconic paintings were not there.  What we did see, however, was an excellent presentation of the progression of his style.  Who knew that he had such a dark, traditional earlier period?  We saw many paintings that were nothing like his later style.  Only a Van Gogh scholar would have recognized them as his work.

The museum was inundated by local high school students.  The museum guards, who normally are seen but never heard, were on "sssshhhhsss" patrol.  Kids being kids, there was a fair amount of noise in the museum.  The museum has a core in the center of the building going straight from ground floor to the top,  that allows for sound to travel.  The students found great fun in calling to each other on the opposite side galleries across the open center.  There seemed to be a bit of a standoff between the kids and the guards.  As it  was approaching 3:00 pm, I figured that it would all come to an end when the kids had to leave for the day.

I'm glad that we went even though there were so few recognizable paintings there.  For the purpose of comparison, they also had some paintings of other artists who influenced him or were his contemporaries in style or time.  All in all, it was interesting.  I know more about him now than I did before.

By the time that we left, we were both very tired of standing and walking. So, we followed that up by walking through the park nearby, the Vondelpark,  It is a very well used park.  Hundreds and hundreds of people bicycling through, some with their kids on the back or the front of their bikes and some with their kids in a little wagon that replaced the front wheel.  Everyone, but EVERYONE here rides bikes.  There must be a million of them in this city.  Larry read that 180,000 bikes are reported stolen every year.  There are very few cars, which is good because most streets are only one car wide.  The "streets" are often paved with bricks instead of macadam.  Everyone uses the same space -- the bikes, the cars, the few trucks, the pedestrians.  Somehow, it all works and works well.

In the park, we stopped at a teahouse for a bit of capocino.  This is a picture of the bikes people parked outside.  It doesn't even show the half of them.



I am surprised that there are not more flowers planted along the streets and sidewalks.  I expected to see a great display of flowers, but the only ones I've seen are by private citizens.