So, while I was on my road trip (almost 6 months ago now) I took some video (mostly while I was driving). Maybe not the safest thing in the world, but I had some time to kill. I figured I would edit it all together when I get home. Put it to the tune of Mr Space Man. The hi-light of course, being the shuttle launch. Alas, no shuttle launch, at least while I was there, so I kinda lost some of my motivation to finish putting the movie together. I finally made my self finish it though. Nothing amazing, but hopefully it will help me remember how much fun I had (making it sure did).
Day 12 – Flying Home
We had to get up early to get our flight home.
I got to see Clair in the morning during breakfast. Eric told her I did not cry this time when I rode the Metro.
Eric gave us a ride to airport. They have a pretty sweet ’84 BMW (that’s 2 years older then Carol, but in a lot better shape).
The plane ride home turned out to be a lot better then the one to London. We were a little concerned going through the airport because the lines were so long, we made it through with a few minutes to spare though.
I got assigned an exit row seat (it’s amazing how much that little bit of extra leg room helps). I even managed to sleep for a hour or two. Heather hit the jackpot and got upgraded to first class.
Maybe Iceland
Heather’s parents picked us up from the airport and dropped me off at my “primary residence”.
Extra special thanks to Elysia and Heather. I contributed to the planning for the trip but they ended up doing most of the research, putting together of itineraries, reading of guide books and by the time we got to London we had a solid list of things to do and see every day. We got to go to pretty much everything I really wanted to see and they took me to see a whole bunch of stuff I would never have bothered with if I had gone by my self and it all turned out to be great. I can not think of anything we did I would have skipped.
Also, Elysia is a bit more of a season traveler then me or Heather and she had a “getting by” knowledge of both Dutch and French and general traveling savvy that helped grease our traveling wheels quite a bit.
Also if you happened to notice the lack of grammatical errors normally present in my writing in the posts on this trip, it’s not because I’ve become that much better of a writer since my last trip (someday), it’s because Heather edited the posts, and they both helped me get my facts straight for each day and remember everything we did.
Also, Heather and Elysia took almost all the pictures on the trip. I do not usually do a good job of taking pictures they stepped it up though and I think they did good job.
Also, thanks to Eliot and Kristine and Eric and Claire for letting us stay at your homes. We are all very grateful for your hospitality.
It was a great trip. I’m glad to be back home but I miss Paris.
Day 11 – Charlemagne and Child
I surprised myself, and woke up just enough to mumble “good bye” to Elysia as she was going out the door (didn’t manage to get out of bed right then though). Then me and Heather slept in longer then we wanted to. We were planning to actually go inside the Louvre today, and considering it was Sunday there might be long lines. We did manage to find time to stop for a croissant before we got on the Metro though (always a good decision). Turns out the line wasn’t too long and we got in pretty quick.
The inside of the Louvre was maybe the most mind blowing thing I did on this trip. It was amazing. I’m not going to try to describe it here. There were so many amazing things in there, and I only got to really look at a tiny fraction of it. I spent some of my time just walking through trying to just get a taste of some of the rooms and I don’t think I even went into half of them. The thing I was most excited about was a statue I had always admired in my art history text book “The Nike of Samothrace”. I made sure as soon as we got inside we went there first. It was incredible. I could go on and on about the things I saw there, so I’m just going to leave it at that. If you want to hear more about it you can ask me.
Jachin with the Nike of Samothrace
Nike of Samothrace
After an all too short few hours in the Louvre, it was back on the Metro to go meet an old family friend of my parents Eric Kvaalen. We were supposed to meet him by the statue of Charlemagne by Notre-Dame. I was sure it was a statue in a park at the back of the church. So me and Heather went there (we were already a little late). We looked for Eric for about 10 minutes. Then Heather asked me “Are you sure this is the right statue”. Of course I was sure, but then I actually looked at it, it was a woman holding a child. Whoops, as far as I know Charlemagne has never been depicted as a woman holding a child. Sure enough around the front of Notre-Dame is a big statue of a guy on a horse, and there was Eric, waiting patiently for us.
Eric started taking us up towards the Jardin du Luxembourg. He had a list of sites to see his son had put together and that was the one that sounded best to me. I recently finished reading Les Misérables and that’s where Mario first sees Cosette with Jean Valjean.
On our way up there though we stopped by the Pathéon. Where we met Eric’s daughter Elizabeth and her boyfriend Jonathan. The Pantheon had a whole bunch of big murals about this history of France and Paris. They did not know all the stories though and some of the inscriptions were in Latin, which Eric and Elizabeth tried to decipher with some success. There were a few panels that remained mysterious though. The Pantheon used to be a church but since the revolution it was turned into a big tomb for famous french people. In the crypt I saw the tomb of Voltaire and Alexander Dumas. After we left, Heather said her guidebook said that Victor Hugo was also entombed there.
Finally we made it to the Jardin du Luxembourg. Elizabeth and Jonathan had brought lunch so we let them eat and we sat in the shade, and talked. The last time I saw Eric was when I was 13 when I went to Israel, they were living there then. We learned that the garden’s flowers are changed three times a year and it is “fashionably” done. It also had some strict guidelines, which include no sitting on the grass and specific places that are designated for activities in the park (running and playing chess to name a few). Even with these guidelines, it seems to be a nice place to hang out and many Parisians were doing just that on a Sunday afternoon.
The Statue of Zeus in the Luxembourg
They had picked out a restaurant to take us too, so we started walking in that direction. On the way there they took us through a ultra fancy street and super expensive shops in it. They were all closed, but we did a little window shopping; insane prices. It just so happens that the President of France resides nearby there.
We also took a quick look in at the Parthenon a big church that looks like the Parthenon in Greece. Cool building. Kind of a strange looking church though.
The restaurant was called Chez Papa and served food that came from southwestern France. Jonathan knew something about french cuisine (his brother is a chef.. cook… something… he told us about the complicated French cooking hierarchy, I can’t remember what rank his brother was). They helped us order some delicious food, and Jonathan gave us a wine tasting lesson.
Jachin with the Kvallens and Jonathan
After a delicious dinner we rode the Metro back to the Convention station one last time to pick up our luggage from the hotel, then we went out to Eric and Clair’s apartment, where we talked a little then headed to bed.
Day 10 – Trying Parisian Life
We slept a little later than usual (that’s usual for this trip, not usual for me), then we headed over to one of Paris’s premier art Museum’s the Musée d’Orsay. On our walk to the Metro we stopped at a fruit stand and a bakery for breakfast. After that I decided I would try to eat at least one croissant a day.
The Musée d’Orsay was awesome. It’s an enormous converted train station with a huge glass roof. I had not heard of it (or if I had, I had forgotten, I’m bad with names, especially those from romantic languages). Elysia thought the art there would be something more manageable in a short time then the Louvre’s so we decided to go there before Elysia had to go home.
Everything was in french so we all decided to get audio tours and split up. There was no way we were going to have time too look at everything (and we didn’t), and we figured that way we could each see the things we were most interested in. I saw a lot of great stuff I’m not going to try to enumerate it. I left wishing we had more time, but that was true about everywhere we went in Paris.
After Musée d’Orsay we met a family friend of Elysia’s, Nathalie. She’s lived in Paris for a long time and we had lunch with her at a crêpery that specialized in a style of crepe from a region of France called Brittany. The crêpes were delicious. We all had a savory crepe and we all got dessert crepes which we shared. During the meal we drank a couple different ciders (traditional to drink while eating crepes) from Brittany that were also delicious.
In the Elevator of Hotel Ajiel
After lunch and a quick stop at our hotel, we got back on the Metro and headed to the the Arc De Triumph. It is a very impressive monument. It was strange to think of the Nazi’s marching through it 70 years ago. While we were there a wedding party in a horse drawn carriage with a whole bunch of cars following it went around the huge roundabout that surrounds the arch. Everyone in cars was hanging out the windows, had music turned up and dancing; it looked like a good time. After that we did a little “promenading” on the Avenue des Campes Elyseés.
In front of the Arc De Triomphe
Arc De Triomphe
Then we took the Metro back towards Seine and walked up to a square that Nathalie had recommended we take a look at in the area. We also tracked down a grocery store and bakery. We bought food for a picnic. During our bike and boat tour we had seen thousands of people sitting by the Seine eating and drinking and we figured that looked like a good time.
Before dinner we stopped for a look inside of Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. It was beautiful inside. We got to listen to some singing. It had also gotten hot that day, but inside the cathedral it was cool and peaceful.
Notre-Dame Window
Inside of Notra-Dame
The temperature was perfect for the picnic, the food and wine was delicious. We just sat by the Seine for a few hours people watching, enjoying the nice weather and watching the sun set.
Dinner by the Seine
Jachin and Elysia by the Seine
After that we walked down to the Musée de Louvre. We had seen it for a few minutes on our bike tour, but we all thought it deserved another look at night. Plus the walk along the Seines to the Louver seemed like a nice length considering the energy we had left, which was fading fast. After that we walked though the park next to it, the Jardin Des Tuileries, where we took the Metro back to our hotel.
We were all tired, and Elysia had to wake up early the next morning to fly home so we all went straight to bed.
Day 9 – Moons Over the Seine
Got up early to catch our train to Paris. One last breakfast at the hotel before checking out. I kinda like Netherland’s breakfasts. It’s mostly just bread, meat and cheese. At first it did not really feel like breakfast food, but after a few days I started looking forward to it.
We got on the tram and headed to central station (fortunately no strike that day or if they did strike again it was later in the day).
The train ride from Amsterdam to Paris was great. I’ve decided I like trains better then airplanes, at least for shorter trips. No security, seat belts, you can use your electronic devices whenever you want and you can get up and walk around whenever you want. The only downer is, it costs about the same as taking an airplane. They also offered internet access, but it was too expensive to justify buying. I’ve heard parts of Europe have better internet access then the US, but everywhere we were internet access was hard to find, expensive and not very fast.
Sleeping on the Train to Paris
I did not see a whole lot of Belgium when we rode through it. I spent a large part of the trip catching up on sleep. The parts I did see though were very picturesque farmland.
After a very restful train ride we pulled into Paris du Nord. We had checked the weather forecast before we left and we were not disappointed. It was 70 F and sunny. Perfect weather in my opinion, we were especially grateful for it, England and Holland had both been warmer than Minnesota when we left, but 70F felt great.
We did not have enough small change in euros to buy tickets from the ticket machines so we had to stand in a line for a while to get metro tickets. Eventually we got them though and headed to Ajiel Hotel where we checked in. I really liked our room on the 4th floor overlooking rue de la Convention, and we had a nice view of what turned out to be a fairly typical street in Paris, but a typical street in Paris is about 10 times classier than almost any street in Minneapolis.
The View From Our Hotel Room
After checking in we headed for what we had been told by several different people as the best view of Paris, Sacré-Cœur (Church of the Sacred Heart). So we got back on the metro and headed up there.
On our walk up I was feeling a little peckish, so I bought a sandwich. The sandwich was delicious but it felt like a mistake because it made me a bit of a target for all the various panhandlers and peddlers of trinkets I did not want. I got past the first couple no problem, but I almost got drawn into the “friendship bracelet scam”. In fairness I tried to get by him a couple of times. I must not have said ‘non’ surely enough, because he persisted. Fortunately Elysia realized I was being cornered and called out at me, and I found new will power to get out of there. I felt like a sucker, but it helped a little bit when the friendship bracelet guy’s buddies yelled at him, and told him not to “push it”. I was a little nervous I was going to have to be saying ‘non’ a lot in Paris, fortunately Sacré-Cœur was the worst of it.
It was a great view. The atmosphere was hazy but I’m guessing that’s not uncommon for Paris. Still one could see everything.
Heather had brought a Paris guide book that had a walk in it through the neighborhood around the church, Montmartre. A lot of famous bohemians had lived and worked in the neighborhood including Picasso and Rembrandt. We also saw the bar from the Amélie movie and Moulin Rouge. We stopped at a cafe on the street to have a beverage and relax a bit.
The Last Vinard on Montmartre
Heather Drinking Her Shandy
Elysia and the Eiffel Tower
After our walk we got back on the metro and headed over to the Eiffel Tower where we were going to take the night Fat Tire Bike tour of Paris. The bike tour was a lot of fun. Our tour guide was from Arizona and she had the same sort of energy, carrying voice and personality as so many camp counselors I’ve known. I did not get a chance to ask her if she had been or not, but I’d bet money she had worked at a camp before.
She needed the energy too, I think we had 25 people in the tour, and while Paris was more or less bike friendly, it is no where near as friendly as Amsterdam and we spent the first part of the tour riding on some very busy roads. I’m sure it was stressful for our guide to find the balance between not blocking traffic but keeping everyone more or less together with parts of the group getting stuck behind changing traffic lights and getting intimidated by the aggressive Parisian drivers.
Heather and Elysia on the Bike Tour
Notre-Dame
We all made it though. At the half way point we stopped for ice cream on a bridge overlooking the Seine River and Notre-Dame. We biked back along the river looking at all sorts of amazing buildings and bridges. Also saw the Louvre, which was beautifully lit and not many people were around at that time of night. When we were most of they way back we took a boat tour and saw even more stuff from the river. While we were on the boat we were served some wine and got to see the Eiffel Tower sparkle. I did not know it did that, but it does, every hour (on the hour) starting at about 8pm. It’s very pretty. We also saw a couple of “full moons” on the boat tour from the crowded river banks, apparently also an old Parisian tradition.
Eiffel Tower at Night
Louvre at Night
After the tour we headed back to the bike shop. We got a dinner recommendation from our guide for a place near the Fat Tire Bike tour shop. Unfortunately either her directions were wrong or we heard it wrong because we could not find it. We tried a couple other places but their menus did not impress us. Eventually, hungry and tired we gave up and went to McDonald’s. I felt a little guilty at first but McDonand’s ended up costing way way less then what we had paid for dinner the last 3 nights. Plus we all felt it was different enough from American McDonald’s to justify it as a foreign experience.
After McDonald’s it was super late so it was back to the Ajiel Hotel for sleeping.