April

Saturday, April 12, 2008
This morning we woke up at 6.45. We ate, showered and cleaned the apartment with time to spare before the apartment owner Isabelle came home. We took metro and RER to Charles De Gaul airport, it took 1.5 hours.
Our flight to Reykjavik departed at 1415. We ate a ham and potato salad type thing, bun and drink. In Iceland we didn’t get any opportunity to eat hotdogs. Luke was mildly disappointed. Dad exchanged some coins.
We got on our plane to MSP at 1630, Dad got us scared when he thought the time now was final boarding. It wasn’t.
The flight was a long one. We ate chicken kiev and rice, chocolate, green salad. We arrived home after 6 and a few hours. We shuttled to the park and ride. Stopped at Mc.Donalds. Drove home, picked up Kaiser from M J Fenton. Then we went to bed. Sorry for the abbreviated events but this last entry is always the most difficult to finish.
The end.

Friday

Friday, April 11, 2008, 1815
Good evening. This morning started well enough, up at 08. Luke was still at my side in bed, believe it or not. Dad left to go pick up milk and eggs at the store this am after much detailed instruction regarding the door locks.
We are in a secure apartment. It takes code to get in the outer door, a key to get past the inner door and then a key to get into your apartment door. It seems he had never seen the door unlocking process yet. We had fresh croissants as well. Mom made the fried eggs, Luke had an egg sandwich as usual. I had a croissant halved; one half with jelly/cheese and the other with butter. I like the butter one better.
Luke and I left to go do his “fun market day.” We had marked a few spectacular stores on the map that all had something to do with cheese or food. We first decided to go to the place we were at the other day that was closed. We figured that at least we knew how to get there now. We went. It was in the Monge neighborhood. We also stopped at the am market. They had mainly fruit and vegetables, some clothing, jewelry, purses, fish, meats and that’s about it. There were 5 big rows of tables. We were quite satisfied, but bought nothing as we were going to be leaving tomorrow. We saw artichokes large as small cantaloupe or big grapefruit.
We then visited the cheese store. It kind of smelled bad. I would get sick of that smell if I worked there. We saw, yes about 200 kinds of cheeses but, alas, we didn’t buy any. I told Luke I was kind of cheesed out. We have about 5 kinds that are still partially eaten in the fridge at the apartment. We gawked and gawked, and then left to walk around some more.
We found two of my goals that I wanted to complete. We came upon a not so busy patisserie. I went in and ordered as Luke asked me to. I didn’t really want to order because I get scared. I did it in as much French as I knew how. I think I did a good enough job. We bought 3 sweets. One was a pastry filled with mousse and had a pastry outside and bottom with a filled mini crème puff on top. It was very pretty and probably the best tasting one, it was VERY rich. The other was a cream puff with chocolate mousse inside. The third was an apple torte or something. The apples were sliced so thin and the glaze or sauce was so apple-y and smooth, it was the best apple filling I had had like ever. I was so happy with that. The pastries cost like €7. We walked around the block to find a place to sit and not be so out in the open. We sat at a not very busy coffee shop. I ordered 2 gran crème and we ate sitting down and paid like €6. We had a very friendly waiter. We people watched a bit.
We wandered around the street a bit; saw what looked like a cooking store on the outside. We went in and it was more of a hodge podge store. We kept eyeing a Peugeot automatic pepper grinder for like 69€. Needless to say we passed. We didn’t see anything here we needed.
As we walked we came upon a kiddy store. There were stuffed animals in the window so we thought we would take a peek inside to see if there was any bunny we could not live without. We saw some bunnies, but not he perfect one. We did come upon something very interesting, a display of music box insides with 100 different tunes. I bought one for myself, Moon River. I looked for Katie and I picked out 2 for her that they didn’t have in stock. I gave up looking. So unfortunately I didn’t give her one. I feel bad. It would have been a spectacular gift. We got a spinning top that you prime with a lever and then let it go, and almost to match it is a little box where you spin the handle it makes a little tune. It is cute and old fashioned type toys. Not garbage toys.
We eventually went back to the metro to another food place. We eventually found it and it was yet another cheese shop that was a little better than the last one. We walked around that neighborhood, looked in an aisian food store, looked only. Then we saw a Shopi store. We did not know what that was. We took a closer look cause we thought it was a variety store. It was better. It was like the biggest grocery store we had seen. How exciting. We saw the most variety of brands and food types here more than anywhere else. We always like to look in the limited kitchen section. I bought a café ole bowl and then saw a glass coffee glass set with the metal handle and frames. I didn’t know the price but I did know I wanted one. Fantastic. I bought it. I love it. It only cost like €7 or so. We also bought a bottle of Orange light (the generic orangenia). I found a Shopi plastic reusable decorated bag that I decided I needed- €1.30 perhaps.
Then we meandered on home, got of at stop Motte- Piquet a stop where we would have to change metros and only ride 1 stop. We got off early and decided to walk around and maybe find a place to eat. We didn’t, but saw some good prospects. We walked home near the rue cler to pee and drop off our stuff. It had been a nice day except for a few stray strong breezes. I had been wearing my scarf as a shawl. We left our jackets and the backpack and walked back to that area, found a café that was open. It was kind of an odd time to eat as it was like 1500 and most restaurants were closed for the break between meals.
We stopped at a café that was open. I tried to order a generic salad, but inadvertently ordered salad nicoisse- a mixed green salad with green beans, tuna, anchovies, dressing, hard cooked egg and a few cold cooked potatoes. It wasn’t too bad, but when you got one of the many anchovies it was VERY vinegary and sour. There was like a whole can of tuna on it, tuna in oil, it wasn’t drained very well. The salad was suitable. I left a lot of it and all the anchovies except like 3 that I ate. Luke ordered a croque monsieur with a small green salad. The sandwich had an egg, ham and cheese on it. It was a very good samich. I had I bite and I was impressed. I then ordered us another large coffee and we enjoyed that for a while. We tried to pay with visa but they did not accept, thankfully Luke had just enough change to pay for it €24. Just our coffees were like €4 each, the entrees were like €7 and then the sit down fee added. I enjoyed this meal even though I got my wrong order.
The Eiffel tower was next on our list. We walked around the park to one end of it. We came upon an impromptu dog park gathering. We were amused watching 6-7 doggies run and play, both big doggies and little doggies. There was this min pin that was especially naughty, he would go away from the gravel doggie area and walk to the green area where tourists were picnicking, basically begging for food. Bad dog. He wouldn’t come to us though; he just peed on the garbage can next to our bench. Luke and I got our fill watching doggies as we missed Kaiser very much. We walked directly under the tower and sat for a while, watched the lines and the dark clouds roll in. It got a little cooler. I convinced Luke to let us walk home.
That we did. We did take a different way home. We thought this would give us a better understanding of the neighborhood and that maybe we’d find a hidden food or general store gem. We did not. We walked home in a zig zag motion. The walk home was unremarkable except for we saw a stray JRT with no apparent owner visible. We crossed a few streets to get closer to him. Lukie petted him and I got to pet just his tail before my shawl scared him. Poor doggie, he ran away.
We decided to walk home more and we eventually came upon the far end of the rue cler. Home again home again. We stopped and stocked up at the leader price. We bought SEVERAL choc covered crepes, 6 bottles of orange pop (lite), and a big box of Buenos, can’t remember what else.
Came home and put the stuff away. Luke is almost ready to serve the French onion soup! We have been waiting the whole week to have this delicious meal. Now we will discuss our day with mom and dad. Just hope we get the cheese eaten and that we don’t leave it in the fridge like we did in Italy. We must commence to pack and clean up the apartment. The finish of this diary will be tomorrow. ljf

Paris day 4

Thursday, April 10, 2008, 1830

This morning I woke up and Luke was not here. I saw Rick on the bed and Luke’s shoes gone. I figured he was off doing his a.m. calisthenics. Close, he was off to McDonalds to get a French breakfast! He came back with quite the armload. The petit dejuner contained 1 small croissant, 1 chocolate pastry, and 1 raisin pastry. Also 2 bacon egg and cheese muffins, and 3 sandwiches made of savory pancakes with ham bits and swiss cheese between. It was all quite tasty. We had coffee and the same thing happened to me. I didn’t want to leave the apartment. I laid down again- just like yesterday and Luke took a shower and I delayed the departure time. I don’t know why, but it is almost like the coffee is making me sleepy rather than keeping me awake.

We finally headed off to the Marmotton museum, which is mostly devoted to Monet. We enjoyed this off the beaten path non busy museum. This one was €8 and not covered by musem pass. It was in an old home as have been many of the museums we had been through. We headed to the basement where there were sweeping rooms devoted to Monet’s early work and series of paintings. We saw several versions of the Japanese bridges and water lilies of nympheas as they are said in French. We saw portraits and landscapes. We also saw some of his “friends” contemporary artist confidants. I found that there was a lot of Sissley that I liked and his work was done in the scratchy style of Monet but of way different subject matter.

As we exited this museum, we stopped in this neighborhood park and had a snack out of our bag and watched the people and doggies. We walked towards a metro stop and had the Orangerie museum next on our list.

We exited the metro and were at the gate of the Tullerie gardens, that is like a few miles away from the Eiffel tower. It was very nice. We walked a bit through that and went to the entrance of the Orangerie. This museum’s main deal is the showing of Monet’s 55 x 6 ft foot water lilies (1 canvas). The total exhibit was about 1900 square feet of his lily paintings. Also we saw some Picasso and Matisse, Renoir, Cezanne. We fortunately went quickly.
We stopped at E. Dehillerin and I was taken a back from the size and amount of stuff packed in that little shop. The display windows were really put together well. We saw giant copper pans, rows and rows of different sized knives, spoons, Slipats, spatulas etc. One thing we didn’t see was a hard cheese slicer. Luke said he wasn’t necessarily impressed, but I am glad we went.
We stopped at a mall on the way. Luke wanted some food so we stopped at a Quick. We had a cheap chicken sandwich and Long Chicken and fries and a pop for €9.55. We left for the metro.

We went to the grocery store, bought soy sauce for fried rice, coffee choco biscuits, 2 pans of Little Debbie Tiramisu. We also got a large jar of nutella (generic) for €1.30.

So here we are to present time. Luke made dinner and we enjoyed it. Luke wants me to hurry so we can perhaps go to see the Eiffel tower tonight.

Today was sunny! You should have seen all the Parisians out and sunbathing. We saw a little Kaiser dog with a foam soccer ball in his mouth, his human brother and sister chasing him and he wouldn’t let them catch him.

We got more Euro change from Rodger. It is kind of nice to have exact change and not have to be handed change back- and worrying if it is correct.

I must say I would do more shopping if I didn’t feel so intimidated.
OK, that is enough for tonight. Ljf

Paris Day 3

Wednesday, April 09, 2008, 2130

Good day. This morning we slept in a bit. I did at least. It was a no shower day for me. We had breakfast, the usual. I had 2 cups of coffee. Then I laid back down. Luke decided to take his shower while I tried to sleep. He was supposed to blog a bit. I don’t know if he did or not.
Mom and dad left in the meantime. Luke and I had a few hours to ourselves as we couldn’t tear ourselves away from the apartment. We had some lunch leftovers, risotto and the potato and bacon dish with cream, butter, salt and pepper. Yummy! More starch for me please!

We went on the Marais walk or basically to that neighborhood as I wasn’t particularly interested in what the walk had to offer me. We wandered around the area looking at the city and the people. I have noticed that Paris is WAY less touristy than Italy. We also saw one of Ricks most disappointing Paris site; the site of the Bastille, which is now just a column in monument. I took a picture in front of it because Bastille Day is on July 14- my b-day. The monument didn’t even have the date of the event on there at all, that would have made the picture better. Anyway then we gravitated to the Holocaust memorial.

The security was tight. TIGHT. We waited in line to enter the free museum/memorial, they let 3-4 in at a time to have bag electronically searched and to walk through the metal detector.
We first saw a memorial wall with the names of the 50,000 or so Jews reported missing or taken from their homes in France. We walked into the basement where the exhibits started. We saw lots of pictures with captions (some in English). I liked the little stories they had. For instance there would be this display with a large picture of a person. Below the picture would be their documents, post cards they sent etc, also a little story about their life. It would start general details about the person, birthdates, family, marriage, when she was abducted, what happened to her family, and what eventually happened to her. I really enjoyed that. I find myself reading the descriptions that are in French. I don’t catch myself until a few sentences later. I found that I can understand a bit of French here and there or at least get the jest of the sentence.

We stopped for Lunch along the way to the Pompidou center. We didn’t find any food worth eating along the way so we stopped at a G24 grocery store. We decided a pre-made sandwich was too much money so we bought a loaf of bread, 3 slices of jambon and mustard mayonnaise. Also we got something sweet- a hazelnut chocolate bar. We walked a bit to find a place to sit down. It was starting to sprinkle out and threaten to rain. We found a seat on the edge of the fountain and it was even partially covered with an overhang so if it did start to rain we would not get wet. We fixed our lunch and then walked to the Pompidou museum.

The Pompidou museum is one that you can see from a great distance. It is tall and it is very different appearing. The escalators are on the outside of the building as are the duct work and ventilation tubes. The museum is like 6 stories tall. Only 3-4 levels but the ceilings are very tall.
We were kind of in a hurry to get through the museum. We paid with the Museum card. We got right in, had our bags checked and dropped off the backpack to free up our arms. We had trouble figuring out where the museum actually started. We rode up like 5 escalators. When we got to the top floor (where the good stuff was) there was a fantastic view of the city. You could see above all the 4 story apartment buildings and businesses, see the downtown skyscrapers, the Eiffel tower etc.

We saw some modern art. Much of it was not pleasing to the eye. Some of it was just large and totally abstract. I told Luke that it looked like and 8th grade art display. We saw some of the big names and saw some pieces we recognized. Saw some Mondrian (the guy who painted a grid of squares and filled them in with color), Picasso, Degas, Dali (weird!), 2 Pollack’s, Kandinsky, Chagall, and Matisse.

The layout of the art rooms was kind of neat. They had a grid of rooms with a hallway between all of them. So each room had 4 walls to put things on, also outer walls, you could walk straight ahead or side to side to see the rooms you wanted. You were not forced to walk through all of them to see 1 painting.

We didn’t spend too much time in this museum. In fact we sped through there pretty quickly.
We left here and agreed to go to the Sacre Coeur and to the Moulin Rouge in the Monmartre area. We had to transfer a few times on the metro but we got there. Then we paid with our carte l’orange and rode the funicular to the top where the church is. One of the better things about this church is the view.
Luke and I looked for a minute at the view, picked out a few monuments with the help of Rick and looked at the crowd, took some pictures and decided to go into the church.
There were of course some beggars at the entrance. We went inside and I was astonished at how large it was. It had primary permanent seating in the center aisles. It also had moveable chairs along the sides of this. There is a Joan of Arc statue, also stained glass depicting her story. We saw St. Pieter and Luke rubbed his toe; it was all smooth and shiny.

We left the church quite hastily. We went out of the church to view the Paris panorama up on the butte. I asked Luke if we could feed the birds with our sandwich bread. He said yes. I was ecstatic. Hip hip hooray. I threw some out to get the birds to come closer, they did. I had one furry warm pigeon that liked me. He kept flying up to my hand. He trusted me; I even pet him a bit, on the tummy and on the wing. I knew it was the same bird because he was missing a toe. We had about 30 or so around us. Lukie was feeding some too. It was quite enjoyable. Luke hypothesized that the sparrows survive by being quicker than the pigeons. The sparrows would catch the bread out of the air before the pigeons could get it. They were so much quicker. We saw a dude feeding the sparrows at Notre Dame and he had quite a few in his hand at one time. That is what I secretly wanted- sparrows on my hand. It didn’t happen..

We walked down the steps to Montmartre. The steps could be equivocated to the Spanish steps in Italy. They were grand and each level had a viewing area with stairs on either side. We stopped to gawk at some of the mediocre street vendors. Luke complained that I wouldn’t let him stop. I simply told him that we had eaten just recently. I also said that he didn’t need any street food. I don’t know why he thinks that is so good. I don’t know. I figure if he wants to eat grand he will eat at a restaurant.

We walked through the garment district. They had bins of clothes with tags still on. Some were 3€ or €5. It was chaotic. We continued on towards the Moulin rouge windmill and Luke stopped in a few shoe places hoping they had his size in the European style tennis shoe that are so popular.

We saw the Moulin Rouge windmill, there was a show going on that evening. We also saw at la Cigale- Yael Naim was to perform that night. I would have liked to go see her, but we would have had to scrap almost a whole day of touring.

We then headed for home and made it there at about 730 or so. Mom and Dad came home shortly after that. We ate powdered soup- tomato and potato. They turned out pretty well surprisingly. Dad made a crème’ brulee’ from a Knorr package too, that was pretty tasty as well.
I probably haven’t mentioned the tiramisu! We found tiramisu like we had in Italy, Little Debbie style! It is prepared in a plastic container and shelf stable. It tastes rummy and coffee flavored! Yummy, anyway we ate some of that too. We found another favorite treat. Chocolate dipped pieces of crepes. Fantastic.

We tried to go to bed on time. We have to discuss again what we were going to do the next day. Bon nuit’.

Day 4 April 8th

Tuesday, April 08, 2008, 1940

Today we woke up when we wanted to. 0800. Luke and I ate a quick breakfast with out even sitting. We ate standing at the kitchen counter. Luke made me one of our favorite Rochester breakfasts- Egg sandwiches! This sandwich was modified though because the mustard was very spicy! Horseradish-y. Oh, and we didn’t have any mayonnaise. It was tasty. Dad was still sleeping too.

We showered and got out the door in 1.5 hours after waking. Dad wondered “Where is breakfast?” and “Are we eating breakfast?” Mom had made them both scrambled eggs.
Our first destination was going to be the Marais walk; this included the modern art museum the Pompidou Center. Well we checked to see what time it opened. Thank goodness we did. It was closed today. So….we rearranged our itinerary. We did Thursday’s activity today; Napoleon’s tomb and Army Museum, then the Rodin Museum followed by the Musee’ d’Orsay. It was the first time we haven’t had to take a metro to our day’s activities. We walked for like 10 min to get there.

Napoleon’s tomb is in a church. I don’t think it is an actually functioning church as there were no pews or hymnals or furniture for that matter. After Napoleon was buried for 19 years he was moved from his grave in St. Helena (where he was exiled) and moved to this gigantic porphyry marble coffin/tomb. His casket was placed in additional caskets and in another casket- like 4 or 5 (a la babushka style) and then finally in this RARE red marble tomb. It is the biggest single piece of this marble that exists. Anyway, his son and brothers are buried/entombed here also. His brothers were awarded to be king of Spain, and Rome (Napoleon II, son of Napoleon), Westphalia (Germany). You know Napoleon named himself to be emperor so he could delegate royalty to his conquered states. It must have been rough. Rick made some joke about the Napoleon ‘complex’- the group of buildings that we toured.

We then continued on to the rest of the museum. We saw a big section on WWI which was all kind of a blur to me. But mostly I remember the trench warfare and the bent guns. To allow the soldiers to better defend themselves with out being a target themselves- they built bent guns. They bent them like periscopes to have the barrel be aimed at the enemy and have the trigger and the shooter safely below ground level in a trench. I hadn’t heard of that before. Now Luke writing: What Lisa doesn’t realize is that you can’t bend a gun and fire it. It really doesn’t work that way. Basically they built a new stock, dropped it a foot and half, connected the triggers and rigged a mirror/periscope system so they could be at trench level with the stock and the physical gun on ground level. We also saw some scary rudimentary type gas masks.

Then we came to the meat and potatoes of the exhibit; the WWII section. This was pretty interesting. The only 1 I can remember is regarding the A bombs dropped on Japan. They were dropped 4 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor! We thought it was an immediate retaliation. It makes the US look a bit crueler. I think. Of course it was focused on the French role, because we are in France. They played up big roles of Charles De Gaulle and the home country played during the whole time. It was kind of neat to see all the guns of the era, and what was being used to fight and defend from the enemy. We saw a remote controlled tank (that was about the size of a VW Beetle, only shorter) and some motorcycles that the allies dropped into France that were the size of the little motorcycles that you see grown adults drive around their driveways.
One thing I didn’t get too excited about was all the period uniforms. There must have been a group of students that were going to school for fashion, because they would walk around and then park themselves in front of a uniform and pull out their sketch book. They were all using black permanent marker that just about made the whole place reek.

When we were done, we came downstairs to go to the bathroom, and one of the employees asked to see our tickets. We weren’t expecting that, especially since we had been through the entire museum. That would be like asking to see a ticket in the Metrodome for going to the bathroom. Whatever. I can’t think of much more to add to the WWII site. It was probably a 3 out of 5. Next on the list is the Rodin Museum.

Lisa and I walked about a block and a half to the Rodin museum and saw a small, but manageable line. We got in with our museum pass. Rodin was a 19th Century sculptor that also did bronze work and some paintings. We saw the majority of his life’s work; the museum is in the mansion that he lived in. That housed most of his smaller works, and on the grounds were about 5 of his better known large garden size bronze works. Rick’s tour started you out in the mansion to look at all the small stuff. I don’t know if I enjoyed this museum very much, because it was kind of hodge podge of stuff. Rodin sculpted a lot of varying nude females. It is said that at one point, he would just have naked ladies walking around moving, dancing doing various things to “inspire” him. If something caught his eye, he would sculpt that particular angle/pose. What a life. He did a few male and female sculptures together, one Lisa liked was called The Kiss, she tells me. He also specialized in hand sculpture, one called The Secret and The Cathedral. The secret was two right hands supposedly holding their secret.
The mansion was two floors and housed about 200 hundred sculptures and 50 about paintings (per Rick). The Rodin museum also featured his favorite contemporary artists. On the grounds were most of his well known Bronze sculptures. The first that I think everyone knows is

The Thinker. You know, the guy that is sitting on something, leaning forward, with his hand tucked up under his chin (I think of Napoleon Dynamite when Deb tells Uncle Rico to slowly put his fist underneath his chin). The sculpture is in a deep though (not of taking a dump either). It is probably his best known work. He also had a bronze sculpture of this author of the time called Balzac. I don’t know what he wrote, or why Rodin liked him, but Rodin did a bronze sculpture of him.

On the other side of the mansion he had probably the second best known work called the Burghers of Calais. It is said that back in 1347 that the six city “fathers” of Calais had to give the King of England the keys to the city and their own lives. So they put on some nooses and had some keys in their hands and off to the gallows. Rodin did a bronze of these six men going to their deaths. Each showed his different emotional expression and posture. They all reacted differently as they were preparing for their own death for the city’s benefit; from humble and honored to hysterics and denial. This was probably my favorite because of twisted emotion and empathy. You could see on their faces and look at their posture to see that these were actually people that were going to die. They actually didn’t die in real life. The King of England pardoned them, at the behest of his wife, and they lived.

After the Burghers of Calais, we saw a bronze door (never was supposed to open) of the gates of hell. This huge cast of doors was a menagerie of twisted figures and iconography of hell. I couldn’t even fathom how they figured out how to do something so big. I guess it took a lot of time and a lot of bronze. It was interesting to look at, and there is some history to it. It was based on Dante’s Inferno and Rodin’s vision. There were more sculptors in the gardens, but most were reproductions of most of the stuff we already saw, or saw mixed into other works. So Lisa and I decided to leave the Rodin museum, but not before we checked out the gift shop were Lisa bought some pictures/postcards. After this flight of fancy, we decided to get one more museum out of the way and go to the Orsay museum. A few metro stops in, and we were there.
The Orsay Museum is based on the years from 1850-1925ish. They feature some realism and impressionism in their halls. Paris was going to demolish a train station, but it was saved because they thought it could be renovated to turn it into a museum specifically for all this turn of the century art that was in many small museums. So they took the tracks out and refurbished it and hung some stuff on the walls and put up some sculptures. When you walk in it is a very airy and open place, and they have small rooms built around the airy expanse. We got to see a lot of Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Degas, Cezanne and others. It is probably the biggest one collection of Impressionism. One of my favorites was Manet; most of his stuff was good. He was a real rebel in the day, and he did what he wanted to, even though Paris, and French people didn’t like it. I don’t know why they didn’t like it, because art is art. Like it or love it.
Lisa and I got pretty bored by the end as we were BURNT out. The place was super busy, and there were a lot of groups that would “hog” the special pieces so you couldn’t get up there to get a good look. They allowed photos with no flash, it was hard to get a good picture cause either you were in the way or “they” were.

After we got past Monet and Van Gogh, I kind of just stopped reading Rick and told Lisa it was time to just wade through the crowds, see what looked interesting and move along…quickly. So we speedily saw a few more things, took the escalators down and got out of there. Oh but wait, Lisa did have a stop at the gift shop for post cards. . After we left there it was time to get going home.

As we were leaving the metro to our stop to get home, we walked past the Rue Cler, and I asked Lisa if she wanted to go and check it out with out the ‘rents. We saw a grocery store, so we decided to go in get some Parisian delights. Boy did we hit pay dirt! We found some chocolate coated little crispy crepes. Those were especially good, and they were cheap like €0.85. We also got some small chocolate tarts for less than a Euro. They were more like flat tarts that had chocolate in the middle, like I small pie, about a half dollar in size. Those weren’t as spectacular. They were okay though.

I finally got some Roquefort Cheese, a yellow cheese and then a packaged cheese that I took a gamble on. We also got some green salad and then we came to the wine department. We had decided when in Paris, get some Champagne. We figured that there would be only French wines, etc in this dinky grocery store, so we didn’t think anything different about it. Well, when we got home it turns out the Asti “champagne” was from Italy, and it was sparkling wine. Champagne can’t be called Champagne unless it is from the Champagne region in France. So we made a mistake with that. Not the first and definitely not the last. We enjoyed the Asti and even made Mimosas with the OJ we bought.

So the cheeses were spectacular. I really enjoyed the Roquefort, but oh boy, could you really see the mold. The blue cheese that you get in the states has some “veins” of blue which everyone assumes is just kind of coloring, and the people in the know can figure out that it is mold. Well, this cheese doesn’t have veins of blue, but caverns of real furry dark green dusty mold. I was astonished. I think for the first few bites, I actually didn’t look at the cheese as I ate it. But boy, once past the lips, it was sure delicious. I would say if I had take a Pepsi challenge with Roquefort and Maytag blue or something, I would definitely pick Roquefort. What a delicious cheese.

The yellow cheese was good, and it was definitely satisfying. Kind of like a foreign cheddar cheese. The prepackaged cheese that I took a gamble on turned out to be good. It was the kind of cheese like camembert and brie with the outer “tough” mold. But once you got past that, it was yummy and tasted like butter. It wasn’t super flavorful, but boy did you get a butter flavor from it. It was tasty, and Beth even got it to spread on her crispy toasts. Lisa made a cheese plate with the cheese menagerie that we had laying around the fridge. It was not as good as the one that we had in Italy that I made, because we didn’t have tons of other goodies to go with it, like Tralli Crackers and olives. But it was tasty none the same.

After the cheese plate, I figured I had to start making supper. We had packed some Arborio rice for risotto and Lisa wanted me to make that. I purchased some grana padano grated cheese for it, and when I was adding it at the end, I only put in half, but I decided, what the heck am I going to do with it. So I dumped the rest of it in there. It was about 2-3 oz in weight that I dumped in there. Hmm, it was nice and cheesy. By the time it cooled off in the fridge from the leftovers, it was a solid hunk of just rice. So that was good.

Rodger and Beth came home then and had some rice and other snackies and then we all decided to get to bed. First Beth loaded the dishwasher, which was nice, because for some reason we had a lot of dishes.

So as we were reviewing the travel plans for the next day, I spilled it to Lisa that I wasn’t particularly interested in going to Versailles. It is supposed to be the palace of all palaces and ritzy and everything. But I was not particularly looking forward to going cause I’ve been to palaces before. The palaces I have been to before didn’t really stoke my fire, nor light any embers, or give me any spark whatsoever. So as Lisa and I went to bed, we talked about it and decided that we could skip it. I am sure Lisa did want to go see it, but I really didn’t, so she took one for the team, and we decided not to. So then off to bed.

One thing I noticed was all the young children in strollers or arms that are in museums. Why do parents take the children along with them to museums that could not possibly hold the attention of small minds? I am not talking about teenagers, I am talking about younger than five. I can’t imagine taking children on a vacation like this. Who says, I think when Tommy turns 5 we’ll take him to Paris to see the Impressionists. Dur.

Day 3, April 7

Monday, April 07, 2008 1930

Good afternoon. It is time to make my diary now. Luke and I woke up on our own time at about 0800. Luke showered. We ate fried potatoes, a fried egg, fruit, oranges and apples, and of course the most needed- coffee. I drank too much. I got kind of sick.

We planned to go to the historic Paris walk. We took metro to Notre Dame area. We exited the metro, and walked around a flower market at the Cite’ Metro stop, the one that had the art nouveau Metro sign. From here we separated from Rodger and Beth because we had already seen the Notre Dame church innards and park. We actually were at the back end of the Paris Walk, so we decided that maybe we should just do it backwards. That sounded fine to us.
The Pont Neuf was a block down from where we were at, and we actually saw some interesting signs across the Seine, so we trekked across the seine and weaved our way to the Pont Neuf Bridge. We found there to be many pet stores along the way. I thought that the pet stalls were going to be ON the Pont Neuf. In the pet stores there were all kinds of puppies, birds, bunnies, cats, rats/rodents and we also saw some small white squirrels (we thought it was a squirrel, he had a long body with a thin long brushy tail). We whistled to some parrots and they whistled back.

Once, we walked into one, and we heard a rooster crow. (What the heck?) Sure enough, they had a couple of roosters in the back of the store along with some ducks! We saw some Kaiser JRT doggies they were like 390 €. Half the dogs were dead asleep, and the other half were frolicking around and playing with each other. It was about the same for the cats as well. We felt bad for some of the animals; because of course they were caged. One was a Yorkie that was pacing back and forth like a caged fox. After the pet stalls, we finally crossed the Pont Neuf (New Bridge) and read about the history behind it.

So off we continued on the backwards Rick Steves Paris walk. We walked towards this little gravel park. We saw a loose dog at a store that was sniffing at something, and right next to him was a huge fat yellow lab that’s only activity would be to raise its head to see the people walking by. During the time we were in the park we saw the little dog run past us to find a spot to play/poop/pee at. No owner yelled at him or chased him, so either he was loose or trusted. A man left an apartment that was in this park with a young yellow lab, and the lab took off after the little dog to go and play, and all of this was going on right next to a sign that showed a picture of a dog on a leash, HA! This park was very small, but quaint, and quiet. All of Paris was almost shut out when we went in there. On our way out, we passed by the Police Station. I think it was more than just a police station, almost like H.Q. for the French/Parisian Police.

We then went to the Concergerie. We bought our 4 day museum card there for like 45€ a piece. It was a police type station in the Republic times where Marie Antoinette was held captive. They had some dummies placed in cells and a vignette of Marie and her soldiers keeping watch over her. After she stayed for about two months in a wallpapered jail cell, she was taken away to Place de la Concord where her head was chopped off. It was kind of a crummy little place. They had a few 3 minute long informational public TV quality movies playing. Oh, and the interrogation area had these giant gothic arches. Just like in Notre Dame. Beautiful, and they were lit well too, I hope I got some good pictures of them.

We tried then to go into St. Chapelle- which is the parliament building. There was line and we were there over the lunch type hour and a sign pointed out that it was going to be closed for that time. We decided not to wait for it to open.

So, again, on we continued on the backwards tour back across the seine to Saint Michelle Place. It was a fountain that was put up to commemorate something, and it turns out that is basically the gateway to the bohemian culture (free thinking, free spirit, beauty, truth and love) and there were a lot of revolutionary things that went on there. One such revolt was when the Parisians were pissed at the Nazi regime. Once we got to this point, we couldn’t really keep concentrating on history, so we started slowly noticing food stands/restaurants. Lisa noticed a creperie. I knew exactly what kind of crepe I wanted, but we also wanted to get a sandwich because it was basically lunch time. We ordered a nutella/banana crepe €3.50 and a sandwich with cheese and ham and tomatoes for about €3 also. We walked into a food type district and were inundated with food shops.

Luke saw a falafel house and was enamored. He bought a falafel were you add your own greens and stuff. It cost €4. It had a spicy mayonnaise and the falafels were a bit spicier than I had had before. I (Luke) was a little miffed at what you could put on the falafel. In fact, it was kind of a crappy little place to get food, because it was backwards. You walked in past the veggies, ordered whatever you were getting, and you both stood there and waited, or you sat down in one of 10 chairs with tables. So I basically waited while more people came in. I got my falafel though, and then walked back towards the door to put my veg. on it. It was a little confusing, but I think I figured it out. Lisa wasn’t much interested in the falafel as I was, so I ate most of it. After we emerged, we wandered around some more in the area and saw about 300 other places to eat. I believe we will be back. There is nothing like quick good food, especially from locals. I think most of my memories from all my trips that deal with food were of the little stands that I got food at. It often times is fast, cheap, and delicious. Maybe my mind thinks that it is good because it is so cheap.
Anyway, we ended up getting one more treat on our little excursion: French fries. Which I just realized that when we ordered them, I didn’t realize I was ordering French Fries. We got them with mayo and ketchup.

Finally we ended up crossing back towards Notre Dame because we were going to go to the Deportation Memorial. It was a memorial built for the 200,000 people that died due to the Nazi “deportation” or concentration camps. We got in free due to our Museum Pass. Well, I guess we technically didn’t get in free since we paid €45 for the four day pass. It was located behind Notre Dame in a gated park. We descended some stairs and through this narrow hallway and saw an inscription on the floor. Then you looked through this prison cell type iron door to another stone hallway- to see 200,000 lit “crystals” to demonstrate all that died in deportation camps.
Next we agreed to take the metro to a food place that we researched. The difficulty is that Luke only marked the location on the map, not the name of the store or what kind of store it was; like kitchen store or fromagerie or artisan bread place. So we went blind.

What slowed us down was the metro. Usually the metro keeps us on time. The metro had some breakdown or difficulty on our line. There was a French message overhead and we didn’t know what to do other than take our cues from the fellow local passengers. We eventually moved to a different line that required lots of walking up and down and on moving sidewalks. We even had to wait for line difficulties at our alternate route. Oh, well at least it was running. We exited 1 stop too soon. But we did find our sought after food place…..it was closed. Closed. There was a chance it could have been closed for lunch so we waited around a bit and shopped at a neighboring grocery store. Bought some nutella, senape, Buenos, etc. Then took metro home.
Mom and Dad arrived about 15 min after we arrived home. We all went out to explore the Rue Cler a bit. We bought some bacon for a gratin potato dish. Luke made white asparagus soup. We are about to eat now.

Dinner was great. I have on my list to talk about a few more things. One is the weather. It has been cool and rainy off and on. Mom woke up last night and came out here to look out the window at the Eifel tower (which you can see from our apartment) and she said it was “snowing to beat hell.” “big flakes!” She also said it snowed for a little bit during the day when they were touring. We must have been in the subway at that time. Anyway the rain has kept the sun away and the temperature in the low 50s/high 40s. It was certainly enough for a windbreaker, a sweater, scarf and mittens if you were lucky.
Here in Paris, they have only 1 color of TP for the consumer. PINK. PINK TP? Who prefers pink tp. Just thought I’d vent.

We have been to some grocery stores Leader Price is our favorite. They have a lot of frozen stuff and ready made stuff, like take it home and warm it up. I suppose they have to because there are basically no cooking facilities in the apartments. They don’t have biscuits or gran cereale like we had hoped to see. They have quite a bit of wine as well. The prices are slightly more than Italy, I think. The meat is exensive, like 4-5 pieces of ham in a package for like 3.00€. They don’t have much fresh stuff, or if the do it is out their front doors and only in the AM.
We bought a Carte l’orange card to get us from a-b day after day for 7 days. It is only good Monday –Sunday, for a given week. So if I buy it on Tuesday I will only be able to use it until Sun before I have to go buy another one. We paid €45 each! EACH! It should pay itself.
I haven’t been killed with kindness here in Paris. People have been short with us and not smiling or greeting us in the grocery stores. This could be normal in any big city in the world. They haven’t been nasty to us though.

Paris hasn’t been particularly dirty or particularly smoky, so that is fantastic. Ok. That is enough observations and miscellaneous stuff for now.

Day 2 April 6

Sunday, April 06, 2008 1800

Hello. Here we are again. We all have our roles. Luke is cooking dinner per usual, and I am now writing per usual. This morning we got up at 6.30. I woke up and was rolling around in bed. I started rubbing Luke’s back and talking to him. He then asked me when the alarm was going to go off. He was so tired he didn’t hear it even ring.

The bed we slept in was A DREAM. We have NEVER slept in a bed more comfortable, and it wasn’t because we were so tired. It is like a foam top mattress- like tempur pedic. I can’t wait to sleep tonight.

Luke packed lunch, made coffee and fixed me a commercial croissant with nutella on it for breakfast while I showered and dried my hair. He made a whole pot of espresso to put in our thermos. We were on the road and arrived via metro to the Louvre as the door opened at 0800. It was so easy to get there. There is a direct door from the metro line. As you exit the car you walk 100 feet and you are at an entrance to the museum. How slick. We walked to the entrance to the museum and were like the 10th people in line. We waited a bit until 0900 opening. The entrance price was free today since it was the first Sunday of the month. Yippee.

We followed Rick’s tour by the book. We first went to the Denon wing and saw the Venus de Milo. I believe we saw a copy of that in a museum in Italy. She wasn’t so impressive. We then saw winged victory. Rick Steve’s made a comment about her dress and the sea spray; I think it had something to do with a wet T- shirt contest. Rick what a weirdo in normal people’s clothing. Her hand was missing and was found buried in Turkey, how they knew it was hers I’ll never know.
The louvre used to be a French palace. They built on the Grand Galley to connect it with another palace. We saw some French royal jewels and crowns. I was so jealous. Saw Mona Lisa from about 30 feet away. The crowds were pretty thick, we had to push a bit to get closer. It was a bit of a let down. We saw some Caravaggio, enjoyed that.

Saw the Hermaphrodite greek statue lying on a cushiony mattress, a beautiful woman until you walked around her you saw her penis. Whoa. I took a picture. Saw some renaissance stuff, we actually recognized them. Then we also viewed Madonna on the Rocks, the Frenchman David’s (DA-veed’s) rendition of Napoleon’s Coronation. Saw Giotto’s St Francis of Assisi where he gets JC’s stigmata. Saw Michelangelo’s statue’s “slaves.” I liked those better than the ones in the Academia. I liked Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque- it is a lady reclining on a bed with an unnatural S curve to her back. She was beautiful.

A funny painting, (that we couldn’t stop laughing about) was a picture of Jesus coming down from heaven to do something….Anyway Luke thought it looked like he fell out of the tree he was standing in front of. Like huhhheaaahhh! We kept giggling about it. I am Jesus probably has a sense of humor.

We had an espresso (from our thermos) in a stairwell, and that served as a nice pick me up. We finished Rick’s tour in 2 hours as he said. We walked on and went to see some Durer, Rubin and I don’t know what else. We walked around and around looking to find Hammarabi’s code. It turns out they had it in a special exhibit that had to be paid. We weren’t going to see it.
We made our way to the exit. We ate our lunch in the shadow of the Grand Pyramid. We ate cheese and butter sandwich, dried berries, hard boiled egg, pretzels, h2o and coffee.

The next thing on the list was to go to the Arc du Triomphe. On the subway we saw all kinds of people dressed for a running race. We figured out where they were headed- the Champs Elysses. That is the street the Arc is on. The Arc is a monument that Napoleon had constructed in honor of a big French Victory- I think it was Austerliz.

The monument was flooded with runners and tourists. There were tons of people watching to be had. We didn’t really think it was spectacular, but just OK. We did see a little boy pee on the monument. He had his mom hold his wiener to pee in public, as he must have had to go real bad. I couldn’t believe it. I guess public urination is OK when there are so few toilets around.

Then we decided to go to Notre Dame to see the organ concert. We dinked around outside and read the tour Rick provided. We wandered up a street filled with street vendors. They sold books and prints and trinkets, it was very worthwhile because they didn’t hassle or bark at us as we passed. We did some people watching along the Seine. A little J.R. doggie and his owner were on a walk down there. The doggie stopped and sniffed at this one spot for a while. The owner thought he was going to poop. He just kept sniffing; she decided to pull him on if he wasn’t going to do business. The doggie did the mule and dug his paws in to resist. She gave him another chance to poop, but kept sniffing, she pulled again- dog did the mule action and the lady wasn’t going to have it-she pulled the little dog and pulled him against his will- about 8 inches before he gave in and walked on his own power. We had some time to kill before entering Notre Dame. We walked around the neighborhood and found an artisan baker; we stopped in and had a jambon quiche and a croissant. The quiche was kind of spicy like taco seasoning, maybe it was coriander or something. It was pretty good. It was about 4 inches round with a pie crust type crust. It was served to us in a paper wrap. We should have bought croissants! They were so good and dark brown, I like the burnt part.

Then, in front of Notre Dame we stood at the zero point, the old exact center of Paris. It was marked by a brass marker in the ground. We took a picture of a bored gargoyle. Also took a picture of some of the statues outside of the church, got some flying buttresses etc. The interior of the church was relatively unremarkable except for the pretty arched ceilings. Saw the Rose window, took a photo. We waited in pews for the concert to start. Then we saw Mom and Dad! They came upon us quickly and in a surprise. We had gone our separate ways today and here they found us! How neat. The organ concert was putting many people to sleep. My husband and I were included, 2 people in front of us had fallen asleep. Mom said she was getting tired too. We left a bit early headed home and Luke started.

Luke made beef stew/soup tonight. We had fresh baguette bread, oranges and strawberries. The base that Luke made the soup with had a disclaimer- “ may contain fish or crustaceans” What a crock. Poor mommy, so needless to say she didn’t eat any stew. Luke made her noodles and butter.

I am hoping we will decide more concretely what we will do tomorrow. We did part of tomorrows walk today. Ljf