Month: July 2015

Since today was my last full Parisian day, I decided to make the most of it. I started by heading to the Art of Lego Expo – featuring the awesome Lego sculptures of Nathan Sawaya – which I have used in my classroom to introduce some “stem art” to my students, so I was pumped. The expo did not disappoint. Check out this amazing artwork: 

After the show I hit a few sites in rapid succession & had lunch at a bistro. 

I went to the Notre Dame crypt – cool ruins of the old Paris, skipped the cathedral (the line was wrapped around the church!) and went to Montremarte and enjoyed the lovely views of Paris. 

To conclude my day we had a Bon voyage/ celebration dinner at the best little restaurant in Paris.  L’Ecrin – yummy! Thanks to Joy, Bethany, Claire and Zoe for being such awesome Paris friends! 🙂

Tomorrow I head home. This has been an amazing trip!

Today was Bastille day in France, a national holiday, so I really got to experience the fun and traditions of the day 1st hand.

We started with a light brunch at Bethany’s, before venturing to the parade route, we found a spot, and settled in for a few hours of standing and watching the Bastille Day Parade, which is a military parade (not like the parades we think of in the states). Before the parade started, you had flyovers by jets, the first one creating the French flag in the sky with red, white and blue dust. It was pretty cool, but I must say that having planes fly that low in a city is a bit unnerving – especially the historic planes that I am certain were similar to those used during the air raids and bombings. 

The parade was different than any I had ever seen – each military group came through in their dress uniforms (I assume) and many of them were marching and singing – while I couldn’t understand a word (no French, remember?) I was able to really appreciate the difficulty of that task – they were very impressive. We discovered that were only saw about 1/2 of the parade because of a split in the route, but it was cool none the less.

The neatest thing was that each year, France picks a partnering nation to be the guest, and this year it was Mexico – and the Mexican Military group marched with huge birds – I kid you not! It was amazing to see them march, sing and cary these giant birds with them!

After the parade, we headed back to Bethany’s to chill before our next fun adventure, a picnic.

Joy planned a great picnic with lots of her friends (and involving wine and cheese, so you know it will be great!). We enjoyed the conversation with each other and the beauty of the park – it was great!)

After several hours, we realized we were done, and we were both perfectly ok to skip fighting the crowds at the fireworks and the Eiffel tower, so we ventured back to Joy’s, ordered yummy Lebanese take out, and just relaxed.

Tomorrow is my last full day in Paris, so I will see what I can check off my list before heading home Thursday evening – I also realized today that somewhere in my blog I have messed up the days – but oh well! 🙂

So, today was a pretty fantastic and busy day. I started my day at the Louvre – which is the first ever public museum in Europe, and is the largest in the world – I knew I needed a focus, because you could spend years in the Louvre, and not see everything it has to offer. The palace itself is a masterpiece in its own right, as you can see in this room: http://360.io/zPKy6d 

The Louvre was once the home of France Royalty, and has an interesting history, which you can see here.

But, back to my visit – I knew I couldn’t see everything, and I wanted to hit the highlights, but the Louvre is massive – so I decided to download the free Rick Steeve’s Audio tour – and use it to guide my exploration.

This was a good plan – the Louvre is overwhelming, and this tour allowed me to see the highlights, and learn a little history about the paintings, the museum and the artists. (I also sort of used his guide in the Orsay).

After thoroughly enjoying my time in the Louvre, I headed to a close site, and another museum, Le Orangerie, which thankfully is a very small museum, but the highlight of the visit was Monet’s beautiful series of paintings, Water Lilies. They were breathtaking and are displayed so well in the museums oval shaped rooms. I failed at pictures here, (too many tourists) but they were just beautiful, and to think about them in a historical perspective, as Monet felt the world needed something beautiful to reflect on and contemplate after the devastation of WWI.

I left the museum artistically fulfilled, and grabbed a quick bite to eat before heading to my next stop, a French Wine Tasting. This was lovely, and apparently the sommelier really liked me, because I certainly got to try more than my alloted 3 wine samples – they were brilliant!

After the wine tasting, I ventured back to Joy’s to chill out a bit before our next adventure.

We started our evening at Bethany’s flat, where she had prepared some fabulous snacks and things for us to have before heading to the Bal de Pompiers – a French Bastille Day tradition. In each Arrondissement (district) in Paris, the firemen (pompiers) hold a ball to raise money for their charity, and these are quite the party – it was such a cool experience – not only because there were LOTS of firemen there! 😉

The live band was interesting, and played a huge variety of music, both english pop and french music, and it was excellent people watching and observing. I loved that this was truly an intergenerational event (at least early on) as families, older couples, young adults and everyone in between enjoyed the party together.

We finally left at about 1:00, but their were still people coming into the party at that time, and from what we understand, the parties often last until 4:00 in the morning – but we certainly were not in for all that excitement.

It was a great day, and tomorrow we get to partake in Bastille day celebrations.

Today I headed to the Orsay Museum, and was disappointed initially to learn that one of the paintings that I had hoped to see was on loan, but no worries – the Orsay was fabulous and I was sucked into the magical world of art for several hours.

The Orsay is an old train station, and as such, the building itself has some attraction as a beautiful building in its own right.     – I loved this picture – it looked like a photograph!   The detail of the sculptures was shocking to me – and nothing that my camera can do justice to.  

There was also a really cool exhibit on the architecture of schools – and that was very interesting to me!   One of the coolest things was the model of the Garnier Opera – theater friends – check out the scenery area! That’s a bunch of pulleys! 

After hours and in the Orsay, I was fading, and starting on a headache, so I headed back to Joy’s, and we just had an evening of talking, Ice cream, wine and a movie – not a bad evening! 🙂

Today was a lovely day. I started by sleeping in a bit. I must admit, a month on the road, going on little sleep and lots of experiences is wearing me down a bit. I’m very thankful that Paris has offered that sleeping in opportunity, as most of the things I have planned don’t open until 10! 🙂

I did realize that if I didn’t do laundry today, I would have a problem tomorrow, so I got directions from Joy and headed to the nearest lavarie to wash my clothes. The lavarie was in a beat area of the 1st arrondissement, so once I put my clothes in the washer, I headed to a little cafe to have a coffee, croissant, and do some people watching in the market. It was a lovely way to kill some time while my laundry spun and did its thing.  I watched families headed to each of the different markets – little ones on scooters, push bikes and in strollers, all joining in the market experience. About the time I thought my clothes should be ready for the dryer, I headed back to the lavarie, and caught up on my blog while they dried. 

Once all my clothes right were clean, dry and folded, I headed back to Joy’s  so that I could drop them off and begin my journey for the day. 

My first stop was the port by the Eiffel Tower, where I boarded the river cruise on the Seine. The weather was fabulous, and the views were great! A very enjoyable way to spend the afternoon.   

After the cruise I explored the Qua Bray gardens, then headed to the Montparnasse tower for some fabulous views of Paris at sunset.   

After enjoying the view (and some Champagne) – I decided a late dinner might be a good plan, so I found an open cafe, and took a chance. I had a lovely dinner of escargots and sea bass. It was yummy – and I had the added bonus of a bit of a show, as the owner had to kick out a very drunk lady, who at one point tried to come and sit with me. It was amusing – especially once she was gone. The owner was very apologetic – he was obviously mortified. 

After my lovely (and very late) dinner, I headed back to Joy’s to prepare for the next day. 

Today was a fabulous day, exploring Paris and hanging out with Joy and some of her friends.

I started my day by getting lost in Paris, which I think is a prerequisite when you travel alone to a city where you don’t speak the language – so I got lost and then I found where I was supposed to go and picked up my Paris pass and decided to hop on the bus tour. The tour was lovely and it gave me a good overview of the city and kind of got me oriented as to where things actually were and how to get around. What I found was that Paris is a very walkable city and it’s not really all that big. After I did both loops of the bus tour, I decided just to wander around a bit and stumbled into a crêperie and had some crapes and they were delightful. They also did this lovely water with grenadine in it and it made me happy!

After lunch, I decided I might as well go ahead and do the Arc de Triumph so that I could see a view of Paris from up high. I went up all 284 spiral steps and was rewarded with a overly view of Paris. The view is very interesting, because it outlines the fact that Paris has had building regulations in place since it was redesigned that require all buildings to be less than five stories, or six stories to us Americans. What this means is that you can always see sky and the spires of churches and other landmark buildings that are taller throughout Paris.  I think it makes Paris have a uniquely interesting big city feel without skyscrapers.

They had a cool photography exhibit where this photographer had taken pictures of uniforms of soldiers from France and the composition of the pictures was very appropriate, and had a tone of remembrance.  While at the Arc, I got to see a part of the daily memorial ceremony honoring the tomb of the unknown soldier, which was pretty neat.

After the Arc de Triumph, I headed to the British Embassy to meet Joy and her friend Bethany for drinks in the embassy gardens – what a cool experience! Bethany, Joy and I had great conversations, good champagne and lots of laughs.

Well stopping by Bethany’s flat to get things to take to our next adventure, a house party hosted by another of Joy’s friends, and we discovered that Bethany and I shared a mutual love of Bourbon. (Bethany being the good Kentucky girl that she is had some on hand, so I got to have bourbon in Paris – if that’s not the perfect mixing of two worlds, I’m not sure what is!)

After that we set out and had a lovely time at Zoe’s party before coming home and crashing.

Also – just a side note: People in Paris apparently love a southern United States accent because in the past 24 hours I’ve had no less than 13 people say to me how much they love my accent.

Tomorrow is a new day, and adventures await!

Today was another travel day through the lovely Alps. The sky and views were clear, so it was beautiful to see the mountains and glaciers that way, since I had a train to catch in Zurich for Paris – so no stopping to explore today – but Switzerland – I will be back!

More lovely views:    
    
    
    

I made 2 interesting observations in Zurich – if you are a man the bathroom costs 1.5 cf, if you are a woman it is 2cf. Now, I do sort of get the idea – men are most like using the pissors (urinals) and there is less upkeep for the bath maid, but it was interesting none the less. That being said – lots of people complained to me about having to pay to use the bathrooms through out Europe, but I have to say – I haven’t minded it one bit. The bathrooms have been clean, and there is never the surprise of an unflushed toilet, and the toilet paper has been stocked, so I happily drop my change in the bowl, machine or coin slot! 

The other interesting observation was in the vending machine at the station, which was right beside the coin machine I needed to retrieve my luggage. 

Can you spot it?  

Yep – in a vending machine, right between the party sticks, mints, lighters, gum, and Swiss chocolate is a pregnancy test kit and a box of condoms. It did make me laugh a little – with the English title in a German speaking country’s vending machine. Honestly – I think it is a great way to increase access to needed items, and it just illustrates how much more progressive Europe is in access to reproductive health items – so much so that they are not relegated to the shady dark bathrooms of gas stations or behind the counter at the pharmacy – but I digress. 

Also in the Zurich train station, I stumbled accriss a huge concert (with lots of squeeling teenage girls), so I’m assuming this Luca Hanni guy is a big deal?

    After my Zurich station fun, it was time to go. 

I boarded my last train for my rail pass journey headed for the great city of Paris. 

Every conductor that viewed my rail pass today said something about how well used it was:

  
 (Oh & lesson learned – don’t pack a nice pen to use on your rail pass document – it is a mess!)I can’t wait to do the geeky analysis of my rail pass – how much did I really pay per km, per mile, and per journey? I’ll do that math after my trip is over! 

I arrived in Paris about 7:30, and Joy met me at the train station, and we headed to dinner at this lovely little restaurant in Paris – gotta love staying with a local in a big city! 🙂 

Tomorrow I will explore Paris!

I spent last night on a night train from Amsterdam, through Germany, and ending at Zurich Central, with one goal in mind – The Bernina Pass through the Engladin Valley in Switzerland. The Bernina Pass is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and ends in Tirano Italy, where i had my hotel reservation for the evening.

This stretch of my trip was made possible because I purchased my rail pass during a special promotion, which meant that I got 2 free days of rail travel. The rail pass wasn’t going to be super helpful in Paris, so I decided the take a whirlwind trip though Switzerland, and after today, I am SO thankful I did.

I had researched my path through Switzerland, and because I was limited on time, knew that an extensive hike wasn’t going to work, but I really wanted an opportunity to explore the Alps – and my option came in the form of the wonderful Bernina Diavolezzo Cable Car – which wasn’t exactly cheap at 36 CHF round trip- but I am sure you will agree from the pictures – totally worth it!

This plan left me with a  slight problem – I of course had my luggage with me, and zero desire to trek that up to the top in the cable car (and if truth be told – with the number of trains I needed to transfer to, I really wanted to travel as light as possible) – My option came to me while I was enjoying a beverage on the train before I went to sleep – the luggage lockers at Zurich – It would totally be worth the 10 – 20 dollars to stash my large bag there, and only take with me the things I needed for the next 24 or so hours. So, I repacked my bag, with the intent of taking my small backpack and purse with me today, and leaving everything else in a locker.

I disembarked the train in Zurich, and began my quest for the left luggage office or the luggage lockers – thankfully this wasnt a tight transfer, because Zurich central is a maze of escalators, levels and shops – but I finally located the lockers, stashed my bag, and headed to the platform to catch my train.

The first train went to Chur, and while the scenery was pretty, it was very similar to what I had seen through Germany and Amsterdam. I will admit, I didn’t sleep great on the train last night, and I dozed off for about an hour. When I woke up, I was in awe – the mountains, beautiful glacier streams and lakes and just the awesomeness that surrounded me rendered me absolutely speechless.

From here, the more I wound into the Rhaetian Railway the more amazed I was – and I could clearly see why this Railway is UNESCO listed – the engineering and design that went into constructing this railway system is unbelievable. The Rhaetian Railway consists of 165 bridges, 55 tunnels and stretches from Thusus to Tirano – and the views – even in the rain were absolutely spectacular. It seemed that while it did rain quite a bit, the rain went away when needed. I will let the pictures do most of the talking, because I am quickly running out of adequate words to describe the beauty I have seen today. The Rhartion railway is a engineering  feat – it is the only railway that climbs mountains without a rack and pinion. 

I did get off the train at Bernina Diavolezzo, and when the cable car arrived at the top it was pouring, and VERY chilly – thankfully there was a restaurant on the top, and I sought shelter (and a warm coffee) inside while I watched the storm clouds roll over the Alps – then about 45 minutes later the sky cleared, and I was able to go go back out and do some hiking around for a couple of hours, then I boarded the cable car to return to the train station – and the bottom fell out – perfect timing! I huddled under the train awning – then ran onto the train to continue my journey – it rained a few more minutes on the train, then cleared again in time for me to get more spectacular views of the last half of the Bernina Pass.

I enjoyed the scenery, and arrived in Tirano with time to spare. I boarded the Il treinto gallo (The little yellow train) and took a tour of the city before headed to my hotel to check in. I checked into the hotel, then strolled around enjoying the lovely evening in Northern Italy.

Tomorrow I will do the route in reverse, the head to Paris to meet Joy and start my Parisian Adventure – my last stop before I head back home.