2.5 hrs in Paris

We were not fully confident of our previously booked BA flight from Bordeaux to Gatwick, despite all the resumption of flights, so we ended up driving back up to Paris and taking the Eurostar over to London.  The drive back was infinitely better than the drive down, and we made good time - arriving in Paris with a few hours to spare.

As we drove into the city, I was almost absurdly happy to catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower.  I do love this city so much!

We returned the car at Gare du Nord and started walking south towards the heart of the city.  Specifically we headed for the Marais, where we first stopped at Dominique Picquier, a favorite stop of mine for fabric bags.  Nothing really inspired me, but then we noticed a lovely shop next door with a rainbow of brightly hued bags in the window - Stephane Verdino.

The gentleman who assisted us was charming and a great salesman, but the closer of the deal was the designer Stephane himself, with whom we had a nice conversation.  So I bought this bag, in beige - totally didn't need it but it's a lovely bag.  BTW it cost a lot less in France...

After that, it was time for my ice cream of the day, which I had at Amorino, a great little stop right across from the apartment we rented 2 years ago.  Their speciality is fashioning the ice cream into a flower on your cone or cup.  I had salted caramel, chocolate and straciatella.  It was excellent!

Then we rounded the corner to Mariage Frères, and stopped off at their tea salon.  Where the cheapest pot of tea was €9 and there were a number of much more expensive teas.  After one of my last trips there, I am always careful about noticing the price now!

I had a nice little tea plate with a scone and a madeleine.  The scone paled in comparison to the real thing in the U.K. but the madeleine was light and delicious.  And a pot of one of the more obscure kinds of Earl Grey tea.

And finally, a short stop at the store to purchase some tea and have a spirited discussion (in French, no less!) with the tea man (pictured below) about what new kinds to try and buy.  Just so you know, Mariage is available in the U.S. but just a few kinds.  When you are in Paris, you will see that they have 14 kinds of Earl Grey tea alone!

And that was the end of our brief, costly but very rewarding sojourn in Paris.  Then it was off on the Eurostar back to London for one night, then back to the U.S. the next day.

This Started Out As A Good Trip But Then...

I spent the past few days in Paris, a trip that started out quite well. It wasn't a perfect trip by any means - I had been hoping to stay in the center of Paris, preferably at my favorite hotel next to the Tuileries, which used to be an Intercontinental but now has turned into a Westin. Alas, the quoted rate was 700 euros - a little too rich for my blood and not likely to be approved through the corporate travel dept.

So instead, I stayed at the lovely Hilton La Defense, which was incredibly convenient for the office and conference I was attending, but which had the charm of a gnat. La Defense was built 40 years ago as the "Manhattan" of Paris - a ghetto of high-rise office blocks and a large, sterile convention center. The hallmark of La Defense is La Grande Arche, built on the same grand axis as L'Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées.

However, it is a convenient RER A ride to the center of Paris. So on the day I arrived, I decided to power through my jetlag by shopping in town (of course!). I took the train to Les Halles, and proceeded to have a big wander of many miles back over to the Arc de Triomphe. I stopped at E. Dehillerin along the way - a cookware store whose reputation is legendary, but which is a far cry of the stylings of a Williams Sonoma or Sur La Table. This was more like a hardware store for cooks, with opinionated sales people who have an elaborate routine for paying and wrapping your goods. I bought a lovely copper saute pan from the south of France, made by Mauviel - copper lined with stainless steel, which apparently is amazing to cook with. Those of you who know me may well ask why on earth I would need such a spectacular saute pan - well, it's very pretty too. And I've since checked the prices - even though it seemed rather expensive in Paris, it's probably twice as pricey here in the US.

I strolled for a while, stopping for a quick sandwich at Paul, at Michel Cluizel to pick up some chocolates and of course the obligatory stop at Mariage Frere for more tea that I can't quite drink up in time.

I ended up having a rather big lunch at Dalloyau - I intended on having a little Croque Monsieur, but saw a wonderful Filet de Beouf avec des Pommes Pont Neufs go by to another table, and picked that instead. It was an excellent steak and the potatoes (glorified poufy french fries) were nice. To feel virtuous, I ate the little side salad first. I finished with a nice pot of Earl Grey and a little Tarte Citron.

I had to rush back to the hotel for a conference call but after that, visited the large mall in La Defense known as Les Quatre Temps (Four Seasons). Very efficient mall, but like the rest of La Defense, with the charm of a gnat.

So you may ask, after all that shopping and eating, why would this not be classified as a great trip? Because I'm currently sitting in the lounge at Frankfurt Airport, having missed various direct flights and currently booked on a multi-stop itinerary that, if all goes well, will get me home 12 hours after originally planned. Let's just say that both United and Lufthansa will be receiving some scathing survey feedback shortly.

Update - I arrived home at 3:30 am, approximately 11 hours after my scheduled arrival...such is the glamour of international business travel :-)

Musings on the Trip

Well we've been back for a few days now and there's a whiff of sadness in the air that our trip is over. Of course, we seem to be taking "once-in-a-lifetime" trips every two years or so, so we're already incredibly fortunate to be able to have these experiences and share such good times with friends.

I've always been a big traveler - I get restless when I don't go anywhere for too long a period of time. And very restless when I don't leave the country periodically. My passport is about to run out of pages...

Now, the fact that I'm heading to Tokyo in 6 days, to Thailand in 12 days and my passport is currently at the Chinese Consulate waiting for a visa so I can go to Shanghai at the end of the month does mitigate any current sense of wanderlust! I anticipate remaining in a fog of jetlag for the next 4 weeks.

I'm a person who makes lists, so here's my short list of things we missed on this past trip:

Things to Do Next Time In Provence
Châteauneuf du Pape
Roussillon, Sault, Gault and more villages perchés in the Luberon
Nîmes
Arles and the Camargue
Saint Paul de Mausole hospital at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (Van Gogh spent a lot of time there)

Things to Do Next Time In Paris
Louvre and Musée des arts Décoratifs
Rue Mouffetard market
Pierre Herme in St. Germain
Ladurée
La grande épicerie at Bon Marché
Versailles
Giverny
Musée de l’Orangerie

It's always good to have more goals... :)

Thursday Night at Musée D'Orsay

I wanted to take the kids to Musée D'Orsay and hoped to beat the crowds by going on Thursday night, when the museum is open until 9:45 pm. Alas, like all my other schemes to beat the crowds this summer, it was not to be. We arrived at the museum at 6 pm to find a line of about 80 people waiting to go in. The line didn't end up taking too long though.

This is possibly my favorite museum in Europe, beating out even the Uffizi. This is partly due to the 19th/20th century period that it covers, and greatly due to the building itself, which used to be a train station. I find it to be light and airy, with none of the oppressiveness that you find in many old museums.

We stopped by the gift shop in the way in and picked up the children's guide to the museum - I'd highly recommend this if you're visiting with kids. It provides a map and treasure hunt for particular works of art, and includes background details that kids would find of interest. There is a similar guide for the Louvre (to be visited on our next trip). If you don't buy the guide, the 2nd best museum technique is to let the kids pick out 2-3 cards on the way in, and have them hunt for those works of art. Having a quest always keeps my kids happy.

We looked at a lot of art and I showed them my favorite painting from my childhood visits - Renoir's Jeunes Filles au Piano. I still remember seeing it for the first time when it was housed at the Jeu de Paume museum in the Tuileries (this was before D'Orsay was renovated to become a museum).

We had dinner in the cafe behind the large clock - I had told Mei about this cafe and she became somewhat fixated on eating there!








Amara decided her favorite piece was Pompon's polar bear while Mei vacillated between the Degas ballerina bronze and Jeunes Filles au Piano.


All in all, a lovely way to spend our last evening in Paris!

Soldissimes!

On our last full day in Paris, Sean took the girls to the Palais de la Découverte, the science museum while I went shopping. You'll find this is a common occurence for our family in various parts of the world - Sean and the girls have been to a lot of different science museums, and of course, I happily power shop for a few hours. If you want to get a detailed report on the museum, you'll have to talk to my family because I'm going to talk about shopping ;)

I started out at the local tea shop around the corner from our apartment, otherwise known as Mariage Freres, the world famous tea shop. There was an impressive selection of teas there. I bought a couple of beautiful containers and asked them to fill them with 100g of any special tea that was only available here in France. The gentleman recommended a Himalayan black which smelled lovely. Much to my surprise, when he handed me the ticket, it was 120 euros for 100g. That's 1,200 euros per kilo of this tea - approx $1,600! Now, I have pretty refined tastes when it comes to tea, but this I couldn't quite stomach. I had no shame - told him it was too expensive (bear in mind, the containers were already measured and filled!), and asked for a nice Earl Grey instead. The new total for my bill was MUCH better :)

I strolled over to Du Pareil au Meme, my favorite children's clothing store in Europe. I like the Rue St. Denis location since it's a really big branch. DPAM is probably the local equivalent of GAP Kids - normal prices (not your Jacardi or fancy kids' clothing store prices) but amazing style. I had already visited their stores in Avignon and Aix last week! There was a huge sale going on the Paris store - now the store is never terribly well-organized even at the best of times, but when there's a sale going on, it's complete mayhem. I spent an inordinate amount of time picking out things, and emerged much later with a huge bag of stuff. But think of the money I SAVED!! ;)

After DPAM, I had a decision to make: stroll over to Les Halles for the French equivalent of mall shopping? Or take the Metro over to Blvd Haussmann to Galeries Lafayette for the equivalent of shopping at Bloomingdale's? It was a tough choice but GL won out - the main store has a beautiful stained glass dome that I like to admire. I decided to grab a sandwich on the go so I wouldn't waste any valuable shopping time...

GL was also complete mayhem, which was surprising. Big sales going on - huge signs said Soldissimes everywhere. I had to buy a new duffle to hold all my DPAM purchases, and also once again, picked up another handbag for myself. This was a bit of a pricey proposition in the end. (I didn't feel too guilty about it until Sean reminded me that when we bought the new house last year, I had vowed not to buy any more designer purses for at least another year. Oops!)

Montmartre and L'Africain at Angelina

When I ventured out for our morning croissants, the sun was shining and it was almost warm. So we planned to go up to Sacre-Coeur and Montmartre today. However, when we emerged at the Abbesses Metro station, it had once again turned cloudy and was drizzling a little.

We walked over to the base of the hill and the kids found yet another carousel to ride. Then we took the Funicular up to the top. It's a pretty short ride and we took the funicular more for amusement than anything else. Luckily for us, it decided to be sunny while we were at the top, looking down at all of Paris. Which made for a nice few minutes.

After a quick tour of the church, we walked over to Place de Tetre. When Amara and I had been here about 5 years ago, we had her portrait drawn by an artist here, and it now hangs in our house. So I had been hoping to find the same artist and have a portrait done for Mei. I remembered where the artist sat, and that he was a Japanese man who's name started with an M. Alas, we could not find him. So Mei had her picture drawn by another Japanese artist whose name started with an M!

During the course of the sitting, the weather switched between heavy rain, light drizzle and sunshine about 6 times. Even the artist acknowledged that this was very unusual weather. The portrait came out great - we'll have to get it framed when we get home. We also bought a nice modern watercolor since no trip to Europe would be complete without picking up some art.

We then headed over to the Tuileries where we got in line to have tea at Angelina on the Rue de Rivoli. Again, the presence of hordes of tourists at peak season surprised me - lining up for tea was not something I had expected. The girls had their famous Chocolate Africain - a very rich and creamy hot chocolate that's more like melted chocolate, served with a big pot of whipped cream to thin it out. Plus a few of their pastries - the hands-down winner was the Tarte au Citron, or lemon tart.

I managed to squeeze in a short shopping sojourn to Dominique Picquier, a lovely design shop that I had visited some years before. I indulged in a new bag there - as many of you know, I have a bit of a weakness for purses and bags...

Later that evening, we wandered over to the Bastille to search for a restaurant that I had found in a guidebook. Sadly, it didn't seem to be there anymore. So we ended up having dinner at Hippopotamus - I would liken it to a French Outback Steakhouse :)

Finally a quick stop at Amorino for gelato topped off a full day of Parisian wanderings.

Day Trip - Disneyland Paris

We had decided on one day trip out of Paris - and despite my cultural pretensions, Disneyland Paris won out over Versailles. Who am I kidding - was it even close?! My logic is that the kids would enjoy Disneyland very much at this age - and Versailles has been there for centuries. They can wait to see it on their next trip ;)

We hopped the RER A to the park - it was all very convenient. The only mar on the day was that it was pouring. It continued to rain on and off until about 4 pm that day. We were all soaked - our shoes would squelch a little as we walked and my jeans managed to dye my shoelaces blue due to all the rain.

The park was very beautiful (even in the rain). It seemed to have more open areas built in, with wider walkways, so it never seemed to be too crowded. Sleeping Beauty's castle was gorgeous - by far the prettiest Disney castle I've ever seen.

My kids have grown up going to a Disney park at least once a year, so they're pretty familiar with everything. The Paris park was lots of fun because even though it was very similar, it was fun to spot the differences. Some of them were somewhat predictable - the food (even at fast food outlets) was excellent, service was slow and relatively indifferent, smoking was allowed in the park, beer was served everywhere. There was such a blatant disregard of the rule against flash photography in dark rides that I began to wonder if that rule was suspended in Paris.

We especially enjoyed spotting the differences in our two favorite rides: Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion. The Haunted Mansion was actually known as Phantom Manor and was really very changed in terms of setting to a Western theme. Pirates was still very similar although it harkened back to the old Californian version before they changed everything to make it more PC, i.e. pirates were still chasing wenches about as opposed to everything they added in CA to soften those scenes.

It's a Small World was also quite different - the most notable in my mind was that they had a whole scene on Thailand, not just two dancers mixed up with the Indonesian and perhaps Malay dancers that they have in the US. And the carousel had the most beautifully detailed horses - with Fantasyland (my favorite) being about twice the size as all the other lands.

Overall I thought the park was very pretty and whimsical, with lots of secret places to disperse the crowds. It was clearly set up for a much larger crowd than what we experienced - there were hardly any lines for anything, and we could see that the queue areas had been designed for much longer ones. Thank goodness - after our queue experiences of the prior day!

We had a full day there, finally leaving around 8:30 pm to catch the train back to Paris.

Cold, wet, crowded with tourists - ah, must be Paris in the summer...

Well it's a lot colder here than in Provence. I think we may have a repeat of our summer trip last year where we were in Scotland (temp ~50 degrees) after going to London (temp ~60 degrees) and Denmark (temp ~80 degrees). I made the kids re-wear their jeans three days in a row because we had no other long pants. Amara still remembers that!

Of course we were in hotels that trip (see previous post on the laundromat experience in Copenhagen). This trip, our apartment has a washer/dryer combo. The washer takes 2 hrs to run and so far, the dryer has managed to achieve a damp dry after running for another 2 hrs. Now there's drying laundry attractively draped all over the apartment. One day, I will have the "doing laundry on long trips" thing completely mastered. Right now, I'm trying to figure out if my jeans will dry in 2 days.

So back to Paris - one of my favorite places in the whole world. Despite the cold, rain and general state of being overrun with clueless tourists, it's still beautiful, fascinating and a unique combination of history and modernity.

Amara and I wandered out our first morning to search for a boulangerie and a grocery store. I love our location - it seems to be in the center of everything. The boulangerie was excellent and just a few doors down from our apartment. We think they use triple the amount of butter than any other boulangerie that we've found so far - which resulted in lovely croissants, pain au chocolats and the big panier cookie that we bought.

After breakfast, we walked over to Notre Dame. The line for the tower was long and the Parvis (square in front of the church that signifies Point Zero for all of France) was packed with large throngs of tourists. A sure sign that the summer high season has begun. It took us about an hour to get into the tower, but it was well worth it for the views. The kids enjoyed discovering all the various gargoyles and Mei counted 381 steps on her way down from the top of the South Tower.

After a lunch and snack break back at our apartment, we headed out to Amorino for some gelato. We noticed rather long lines there yesterday, and when we actually went there ourselves, we understood why. They serve gelato in a cone and shape it to look like a lovely flower. Which is great but the throughput definitely suffers. Then again, no one is really in a hurry here in France.

We took the Batobus over to the Eiffel Tower. It was almost 6 pm by the time we got there. Silly me - I thought that would mean that the crowds would have thinned out. I was wrong. My old trick of bypassing the lines by getting a reservation for a meal at Altitude 95 was also a bust - they had been booked up for 2 weeks. Clearly, my travel tricks for Paris do not apply when the peak season starts.

Mei had been looking forward to visiting the Eiffel Tower for some time and she pronounced it "better than what she had thought". That's no small feat, considering we waited in line for some 90 mins to get up there. We only went up to the second level, choosing not to wait for the additional 30 mins to get up to the top level. It was very windy and our choice of wearing skirts that day did not pay off at all. After all that waiting, we spent quite a long time up there. We descended from the 2nd level to the 1st level using the stairs,which is a fun way to see the inside of the tower.

Finally, we had the requisite carousel ride, were rained on (I had inexplicably left my umbrella at home for the trip to the tower) and rode the Batobus back to the Marais. It was very late but I wanted to try out a famous falafel place around the corner from our apartment. L'As du Falafel came highly recommended and I have to admit that at 11 pm that falafel, lamb schwarma and fries hit the spot!

TGV to Paris

On Sunday, I went to the market at Pellissane for my last market fix before we headed up to Paris. It's funny what difference a week makes - the market seemed much more ordinary than last week, after we'd seen what other markets had to offer during the week. Can you believe I became that jaded after just a week?!

We found the Hertz car return process at the Avignon TGV station to be rather opaque, so I'm hoping that everything turns out ok in the end and that I won't be hit with some unexpected charges. Unfortunately, our train turned out to be 56 minutes late with some technical difficulties. The ride itself went very smoothly, despite my decision 4 months ago to purchase 2nd class tickets, instead of forking out for 1st class (like the rest of my travelling companions!). We had an upstairs set of four seats, with a fold out table in between. It was pleasant watching the countryside fly by and we reached Paris in 2 hrs 40 mins.

We rented a lovely 2 BR apartment in the heart of the Marais. As our taxi drew near to the address, located on a narrow but extremely packed street, I was amazed at the sheer number of people about. Our driver informed me that it was because this district was especially packed on Sundays. I can since attest that it's not just only on Sundays...

We had a short time to decompress before we left for our 8 pm reservations for Sean's birthday dinner at Au Pied de Cochon. This is a traditional French brasserie, not really known for its food but high on the ambiance and in a good location. Their French onion soup was reputed to be great. The 9 of us had a nice meal - of course, it ended up later than expected, as usual. Highlights included both of my daughters trying (and seemingly liking) Escargots - thank goodness they're turning out more like me on the food front ;) My other big conclusion of the evening is that genuine Andouille sausage (or at least the way they serve it in France) is one of the most disgusting things I've ever tasted. Word to the wise - it's NOTHING like what you think an Andouille sausage from the US is like. And I usually have no problem eating weird stuff.

After dinner, we took a stroll to l'Ile Saint-Louis for our first Berthillon ice cream of the trip. They even had one of my favorite flavors that night - a lovely Pear sorbet. Almost made up for tasting that Andouille sausage...