One month.

One month since we broke in callouses on our feet and shoulders. One month since we flew over Nunavut, hairline streams running to the Arctic. One month since RyanAir and sitting on the floor in Gatwick dreaming of Ireland.

In that month we've seen nine countries and been to ten different places. We've gone from English to Gaelic, French to Dutch, Spanish back to French. We heard German and now we're patching together Czech.

We've eaten elegant and we've eaten off of paper napkins. We've seen successes and we've seen bummers.

Atlantic. Mediterranean.

Port cities. Inland.

Hot. Cold.

Too much wind. No wind.

We've made generalizations and we've been surprised. We've made a list of places on next time and some places aren't on it.

Round one. Who's up for round two?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Song for Paris Pt 2

One for Moulin Rouge. 

One for Disney. 

One for my love bridge.

I wanted "The Knot" by Jill Barber but I can't find a version of it online for you. 

"Tie your love in a knot that can never be undone." 

So here's Mutemath. 

These are all property of the performers. I do not own any of these songs. 

Mona Lisa and Dancing in the Red Light

Paris Pt 2

Paris was the first place where we were longer than it would take to stub out a cigarette and down a beer, with maybe a picture of a cool statue or tombstone. We had a day to sleep off the travel. We had a day to wander with no agenda. We had a coffee maker in the flat. A boulangerie downstairs. At the Carrefour across the street we could buy a Grand Cru Bourgogne wine for € 1.40, the equivalent of a Pep'n'Ched from 7-11 back home. There was something almost habit forming about Paris. We had walked Port Royale to the Seine many times. We had sauntered the fromageries and boucheries of Les Gobelins down into Rue Mouffetard, our waistlines were beginning to recount it. Already we had knocked things off our list.

Our time on the Left Bank had been well fed. The French adage, "La rive gauche pense, la rive droite dépense"( The Left Bank thinks, the Right Bank spends) hadn't really held true. We hadn't really thought a lot. And we surely had spent. We eyed the Northern bank, advice from a friend ringing in our head, "Head to Montmartre. That's where all the artists are." So we went.

We bumbled off of the Chateau Rouge metro stop and rose through the stifling air to the most multicultural mass of people. We were elbowing our way past Arabic, Portuguese, Persian and Afrikaans, past shops for hair extensions and weaves and selling Halal goods for about a block and suddenly, no one. From Boulevard Barbes to Rue de Clignancourt, a matter of a block, it goes from a 'medina' to a quiet street with an antique bookshop and a cafe specializing in southern-style bouillabaisse. Montmartre is located on what is known as Butte Montmartre, a 130m elevation at the top of which sits the Sacre Coeur Basilica. The 18th Arrondisement coils around that elevation and braids staircases up the sides, pinned with cafes and record stores. The area hosted relative unknowns like Picasso, Van Gogh, Mondrian, Monet, Toulous-Lautrec, and Dali. There's something in the water, I'd wager. The vantage point of the area gives unreal perspective on the city, the flatness, the reach of it all.

You walk the coil up from Chateau Rouge to the back of Sacre Coeur, where the high sun lines the dome of the basilica in a gold wire. Walking past a violinist playing Edith Piaf, you wind around the front and instantly you are swallowed by a crowd, a break dance group and hawkers trying to tie strings to your finger.
"No sad today, mademoiselle."
No thank you. No thank you. No friggin THANK YOU. Babe let's go in the f***in' church.

In the crypt

We quickly learn that even if we have seen copious amounts of churches, even if we have no interest in seeing any more churches, taking any more pictures of baptistries or sacramental candles, churches are usually dark and usually cold. I'm in.

Parisians love their parks. We quickly learn this is there is a difference between the tourists who sit in the park to figure out what they're doing or to sit for a half hour to 'take in the scene'. Parisians sit for hours, reading a book, chatting or daydreaming.

Weaving in between the languishing Parisians, we made our way down to Boulevard de Clichy. We bought advance tickets to the Louvre the next day and got good advice to watch our pockets. "We are in their kingdom," he told us. It all sounded very exciting and I didn't even have pockets.

Down the street is Moulin Rouge, the birthplace of Can-can. I thought, like most places in Paris, that the Moulin Rouge, may have been turned into a museum, a place to remember what it was. But it still is. A cabaret of the best kind, a gentleman's club, a place to watch what I believe is called, "Sexy Dance". I could only walk into front to it and think of tortured Christian and his writer-slash-sitar player identity. And Satine caught up in love when she can't afford it. I wanted to see 'Roxanne' danced out, just once.

But I really didn't need to see any naked boobs that day. It was just too hot out. So we continued on. Back onto the Metro, we were spit out at the Champs Elysees. It actually means in French, Elysian Fields, which is where the blessed go to die in Greek in mythology. The last leg of the Tour de France has finished on the Avenue de Champs Elysees since 1975 and the largest military parade in Paris occurs here every year. The Grand Palais and Petit Palais face each other before giving way through majestic gardens to the Musee de Orangerie.

Grand Palais 

Petit Palais

There was something in this area that my li'l pastry chef honing device couldn't pass up. We turned down Rue St Honore, who is the patron saint of pastry chefs. My very own little dork out moment. We passed through the Place de la Concorde to walk along Rue de la Faubourg, a street with more labels that I had only ever seen in magazines. You could buy La Perla for your toddler. A brand where you can get an ADULT bra -just a bra- for €183, you can outfit your toddler. I doifuouotutodjdiu -I obviously do not live in that world.

Anyway, we pushed past the area that makes me feel bad about money, and onto a small street opposite the Tuileries gardens called Rue de Cambon. And on that little street is a 'little' shop called Pierre Herme. The Godfather of Macarons. Not a badass thing to be the Godfather of but damn does he do them something right. *How can you tell I'm already watching too much of The Wire?

I will post a video at a later date because the macarons were phenomenal and we ate seven -SEVEN- of them in about 45 seconds, making a bad impersonation of culinary criticism to justify it. His macarons are phenomenal. And who he trains to make his macarons has their head on straight. That is how they are meant to be. The flavours, the textures, oy vey. Jasmine, saffrons, peach and apricot, halzenut praline and his famous Mogador, passionfruit and chocolate. I can die a happy woman now, and if I don't die I will spend every day of my professional career trying to make them taste like that.

With a little jolt of sugar in our systems, we walked the Tuileries gardens and back home. The Tuileries Gardesn were attached the the Tuileries Palace when it was a a royal accommodation. But after the French Revolution, which is where most of the iconic Parisian stops now come from, it was turned into  a public garden. And the Parisians and their gardens -I have told you. Apparently, it was the first Royal garden to be open to the public after the Revolution.

I am not kidding you, if you are a sun whore, go to Europe in the summertime. You WILL -no question- have to contend with MASSES of tourists. But the sun is like a friggin' harpy. Completely unyielding, no clouds to speak of, and miles upon miles of walking paths and destinations. But bring water, because otherwise you turn into an asshole. I speak from experience.

The next was our DAY. We dragged our asses, accustomed to the Parisian summer way of life, dragged our asses out of bed and walked the idyllic, sleepy, pre-nine o'clock Rue Mouffetard to Notre Dame. Early in the morning, and by 'early' I mean 9 o'clock -the church doesn't even open until 9:30- there are very few people out. Most shops are closed. There are a handful of people walking the streets or taking the bus. Boulangeries are really the only people open because they have to be. But this very fact meant that we made it to Notre Dame without fifty people in line before us. Notre Dame is by donation, and their main focus right now is renovations for 2013. Because 2013 marks their 850th anniversary, not just when the church was finished but the entire parish! 850 years! I'm sorry, I have NO frame of reference for that kind of time. Alberta had their 100th and I thought, 'Holy crap, this place is like Laura Ingalls Wilder'. Um, lame. But Canada is not Europe. And it's not a bad thing that the aboriginal cultures decided to communicate everything orally. Just means we have a different recounting of our history.
But 850 years.

My best friend is a master of moments. She, just like my husband, just thinks on a plane that zooms in on something and makes a moment so much more than just momentary. I have been blessed with both these people. I'm just trying to figure out their method.
When we were home, just before, we left on this trip, my best friend showed me a video her mother had posted on her wall. It was of a small bridge near Notre Dame that Lacey had found out about where people pin locks on the bridge and throw the keys into the water as a symbol of their love. Informally, it's called the "Love Bridge".  Lacey's mom did it and it was instantly put in my mind that we would do it too. And then I forgot our lock at home.
So much for magic. Like I said, I'm just trying to figure out their methods.
Out of Notre Dame, with my best rendition of "Hellfire" behind us, we picked up a lock at the numerous shops capitalizing on the 'Love Bridge' phenomenon. Apparently, a few years back the bridge got so 'locked up' wit locks that the government came in and cut all the locks off. Whether this was to facilitate more people coming through or to discourage it, it did the former in spades. We strategically found our spot so that next time we come back we can find it. Either it will still be there, layered beneath other locks that came after us or it'll be in a dump somewhere after the government does the same thing but it will be a symbol of a moment in our marriage. Marked by the third post from the beginning of the bridge right at the top for our third anniversary, a memory of the trip of a lifetime.

We really liked this lock as we looked at them all. It's kind of what we are too. 

Lufora: 'forever love' in latin

From Notre Dame, we were Louvre bound. It's only about a five minute walk to the Louvre. You cross onto the Right Bank from Ile de la Cite and walk along until you come alongside a massively ornate courtyard off the Cour Carree. The Louvre.

Passing inside the courtyard, you are greeting with statues and carved sconces, a large fountain, some construction equipment. You pass through another arch and there it is: the pyramid. Memories of spiritual conspiracy and an accessibly-written novel-turned-summer-blockbuster came to mind. Down some stairs and it is the equivalent of the "This is Thriller-Tower of Pisa" photo. Everyone is standing on the stone posts, 'pinching' the top of the Louvre with their fingers. It's hilarious and kind of surreal to walk through a courtyard full of people doing the same photo.

I wasn't content to do the typical Louvre pic.
So I invented my own. It's gonna be big.

We breezed past the arching line of people and were appropriately questioned about the 'couteau' on our person, or knife.
'No, just a jar of jam I brought for breakfast."
You walk into the pyramid, past a glittering filigree spire that marks the courtyard where the four branches of the museum meet. We grabbed a map and headed towards where we could find the beginning.

When the Louvre was built, in the effort of digging down, they found the remnants of a medieval castle built in the 12th Century. Deciding not to build over top of it, they found that they had an exhibit custom made for them. They created the "Medieval Louvre" exhibit where they made a mockup of the castle that used to stand on the site and then a path that leads around it to explore. When Louis XIV decided to choose the Palace of Versailles as his official residence, the Louvre was chosen as a place to house the royal collection. So it's really been functioning as a Museum for a very long time, since the late-1600's. It was designated an official museum during the French Revolution.

Out of the Medieval Louvre exhibit, you wander into Egyptian Antiquities. More mummies. More indications that our civilization now is built on the Egyptians, everything from our concept of health care and ceremony to women's jewelry and makeup. From there you go to Greek Antiquities and in you wanderings, you see another crowd. What's for? Just the Venus de Milo.

Moozh isn't one for statues. He could wander through galleries and look at paintings for hours but statues just aren't his thing. Me, on the other hand, I could stare at statues all day. There is something about the dynamism of statue. They can seem very much real.
I don't know how many times Moozh asked, 'Baby who is that?"
"I don't know."
"Then why do you want to take a picture?"
There were a variety of responses. In some cases, it was beautiful. In some cases, it was famous even though I didn't know why. In some cases, they just had great bums.

The Louvre houses some beautiful artwork. But the Louvre just IS a beautiful building. Outside, inside, everything has this staggering amount of detail. And in unexpected places. I guess it used to be a palace and so that would have been typical, but you wander through these halls and you find yourself taking picture of the walls and the ceilings and not even realizing the art that's in front of you. To live in Paris as an Art Student would be a dream realized.

We saw the hordes of people and we knew what it could only possibly be. The Mona Lisa. We were told to prepare ourselves for the Mona Lisa, that it would be much smaller than we thought. There are a ton of friggin' huge paintings in the Louvre. But somehow I don't know why I never thought the Mona Lisa was six feet by six feet. I always thought it was kind of portrait size. Like the Eiffel Tower, it holds this massive reputation that I totally believe you could see it and think, "Wow, I thought it would be bigger."

You can get about as close to it as you would get to a fire. There are copious small, tiny French women in Louvre name tags to stop you. I felt the compulsion to make the joke that the way the Mona Lisa made me feel was that I wanted to strip naked and draw a pentagram in my own blood. Moozh didn't laugh. I did though, so it's okay.

Napoleon is all over the place in Paris. The portrait of the crowning ceremony really is one of those portraits that is six by six. 

Eros and Psyche

Salome and the head of John the Baptist. I always think of Oscar Wilde's play about it, where Salome and John the Baptist had this cheeky dialogue and then she dances a sexy dance for Herod and he gives her John the Baptist's head on a platter.

This painting made us both stop in our tracks. From an episode in "Paradise Lost" by John Milton.

There was an exhibit all of the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene and Christ crucified.


It doesn't look it but these statues are massive. Each statues easily stands eight feet off the block.

After the Louvre, it got me thinking about the Da Vinci Code. And the Church of Saint Sulpice factored into that conspiracy. The brass meridian, or "Rose line" in the church was believed to indicate a pagan temple and that the church was associated with the Priory of Scion and which would lead to the location of the Holy Grail.

It didn't feel like a church consumed by conspiracy. They had a drop box for clothing to send to kids in need. There were people wearing fanny packs, people sitting in complete silence in front of the statues of the saints. It seemed like a real, neighbourhood church where people came to meet with God.

Our full day ended back at the Eiffel Tower.

Drink a bottle of wine in a park with someone you love. I am fully endorsing decanting one into a coffee canteen or double walled water bottle. Watch the sunset. Watch the sun glint off the leaves or waterfront. Sit in peace. Sit without needing to go anywhere.

Things that I learned in Paris Pt 2:
If you are a foodie, you have no friggin idea what's going to happen to you in Paris.
In a city like Paris, there is quite literally something for EVERYBODY. The city is not just for one kind of person.
Buildings can be a work of art too.

Quote:
Me: Is that Daniel and Goliath?
Moozh: You seriously mean David and Goliath?
Me: shiiiiiiiii…..
Moozh: Please put that on your blog.
Me: No.
Moozh: Please.
Me: I got confused. 

Song for Paris Pt 1

You have to have a song in French!

And you have to have something jazzy. I kind of felt like I was walking to this the whole time we were there.

Property of Coeur de Pirate and Caravan Palace, respectively.

A Sticker on the Sky and a Wild Goose Chase

Paris: Part One

I'm typically not one to idealize Paris. The French and specifically Parisian heritage I still have, if any, has raised me to be overly familiar with the ways of the Parisian French. The snobbery was no surprise, the aloofness and independent nature totally familiar. The food, the wine, the pastries: I just finished a program where it was all injected to our jugular as gospel truth.

But damn Paris is gorgeous. And it does need two posts.

Paris began with us realizing that our train pass was not as simple and cheap as I thought and had made it sound. We had to take a bit of a detour to keep it cheap which still put us in Paris for 2pm. Paris was our first experience with AirBnB, a vacation rental by owner situation. We found a tiny apartment in the Latin Quarter, top floor from which you can see the Pantheon and, after dark, the beam from the Eiffel Tower. It overlooked the clusters of those iconic Parisian rooftops, each like a mantlepiece lined with terracotta pots, vases and found things. 

 

We got ourselves unpacked and went down to the neighbourhood Carrefour to pick up some food. I can verifiably say that we ate a baguette everyday for four days. Our diet did stray from that but we made sure to incorporate something quintessentially Parisienne into our food cost. And everyone we saw was walking with one. Baguette, some good double cream brie and some jambon, we were set. We picked up three or four bottles of beautiful French red wine. For a couple of Euros each, how could you not? After this, we explored one of the most popular areas for food markets and cafes, the Rue de Mouffetard. Bourdain suggested a cafe along Rue de Mouffetard called La Papillion. We thought, maybe we'll hit it. Ya know, on our way home, real flexible like. Not open. In fact, closed until August 17th. All good, coincidental bad luck. Through this we discovered our morning ritual, a cafe dilonge (long shot espresso) at Le Verse Tojours and freshly baked croissants and Boulangerie a la Monde. 

We realized quickly people can tell when you're a tourist, even if you're trying hard not to look like one. And when they can tell you're a tourist, they ask where you're from. When you tell them Canada, they automatically assume you speak French. It's amazing how much you can pull together, just vocabulary wise. But 'Je ne parlez pas Francais' goes a long way when someone starts asking you for directions. 

First day, we went to book our train reservations for Barcelona, and from there waltzed along the Seine while the morning opened up. Curving around the Seine, you first see Ile St Joseph, the first of the two islands situated in the middle of the seine. Paris grew out of a small settlement of a tribe named the Parisii on these islands. Above the eastern most point of Ile de la Cite rises the gothic spires and gargoyles of the cathedral of Notre Dame. I instantly move into my most operatic rendition of the Bells of Notre Dame from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, which is unfortunate because then for the rest of the day I had about six bars of it stuck in my head. 

We snap pictures of the exterior as we eye the forever snaking line to get into Notre Dame. We decide to come back earlier the next day and we'll got and find a place that Anthony Bourdain said has great croissants and OJ. This is the moment in our programming where we realized GoogleMaps is not in Europe what it is in North America. Another half hour of walking and staring at streets, feeling confused. We hit the Pantheon, by our place, which is where Marie Curie, Voltaire and Rousseau are all buried. It's for all the brainy ones. You can climb the steps all the way to the top to see a replica of Foucault's 67m pendulum that he used to prove the rotation of the earth. It had to be installed into the bell of the Pantheon because no where else at the time was big enough to fit it. 

We headed home and had our first French meal. Cheese and bread with some chilled Rose. We eased our aching feet and then took a walk to the Luxembourg Palace, which is now the seat of the French Senate. The French very much take pride in their gardens. Disney movies weren't lying. So many different flowers and succulents, palm trees, and topiaries. At most of the castles and palaces we saw, all the trees are are blunted into squares. 

On our way home, we walked back through Rue de Mouffetard and found an Egyptian cafe with hookah. Sitting in cafe as the sun set, and the terraces opened for the late night drinks along the tiny cobblestoned streets was the perfect way to end our first day. We kicked our shoes off and collapsed into bed. We fell asleep to the distant sound of an accordion playing in the background. 

Our second day we were determined to get a handle on addresses and to find them definitively on the maps. No more GoogleMaps nonsense. First stop, the Invalides.  Louis XIV built the Hotel de la Invalides for unwell soldiers. It was meant to be a place for the sick and the dying, where they would otherwise have no where to go and no one to care for them. It has fifteen different courtyard including one called the 'cour d'honneur', or 'Court of Honor' for military parades. This set it up to be somewhat of a big deal. Parisian rioters stormed the Invalides and took the cannons so that they could storm the Bastille during the French Rev. Alfred Dreyfus was degraded here during the Dreyfus affair. Napoleon is buried there! The building itself was inspired by St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and conversely, the Capitol building in Washington, DC was based off of Les Invalides. That 'wedding cake' construction just has this je ne se quois. 

From there we were going to go find another Bourdain destination, armed with better directions and addresses. Our destination is Le Royale, for friggin croissants and OJ. This time, we found it fairly quickly and very quickly found that it was closed. Until September 3. We start that kind of laughing -that funny laughing. Not funny 'ha-ha' but funny 'something's loose up there' laughing.  

From here, we were only a few blocks off of Tour Eiffel. Laughing off the Le Royale but feeling a little hungry, we wandered over to the Champs de Mars to take some pictures. The sky was cloudless and it somehow functioned to emphasize how…small the Eiffel Tower is. It's not small. It's an 81-story building. But it stands so LARGE in memory, in cultural consciousness, that when you see it, the first thing that leaps to mind is, "I thought it'd be bigger." It kind of looked like a sticker on the sky, one that you bought at a Post Card shop. 

What about Bourdain's other suggestion near the Eiffel Tower? We have truly bad luck with this stuff. Feeling like the Eiffel Tower kind of looked like a sticker against the sky at the moment, with high sun and no cloud, we went for one last jaunt. Well worth it. 

La Cocotte, is a restaurant concept from Christian Constant where he centres his menu around a Staub cocotte, which is a stoneware baking dish. Almost everything came in it. Some nice red wine, some amazing country style pate, some red fish with tapanade and the original Cesar Ritz salad, all within view of the Eiffel Tower, that day got to be our splurge. 

From there, we crossed the Seine and up to the Arc de Triomphe. We pushed past the ritzy shopping district on Avenue George V and up Avenue Champs Elysee. The Arc is much bigger in person than it looks. We wander through the tunnel that leads up to the Arc. Temporary fences partition off the arch. There are veterans, flags and a full military band. Everyone in the place was just silent. We later find out that August 10th is the anniversary of the storming of the Tuileries and the start of the French Revolution. The ceremony lasted probably about half an hour. There is a tomb of an Unknown Soldier underneath the arch. There is always a flame lit above the inscription that reads, ICI REPOSE UN SOLDAT FRANÇAIS MORT POUR LA PATRIE 1914–1918 ("Here lies a French soldier who died for the fatherland 1914–1918"). 

From the Arc you could see the sun just dipping behind the spire of the Eiffel Tower. Reading to sit down and relax with some wine, we wandered over. The Eiffel Tower is one of the buildings that is so large in lore and in expectation that when you see it during the day, when there is all the hustle and bustle, it's almost underwhelming. But then night falls. The columns light up with spot lights. Suddenly, it reaches up into the black night, it's beam seemingly reaching far beyond Paris. It is all you have been told and all you imagined when you pictured it in your mind. The first five minutes of the hour arrive. Bulbs that line every beam on the tower go off randomly. It really does sparkle. And it takes your breath away. When the lights first started, there was a collective gasp from the entire park. There is something about watching it sparkle that pictures don't do justice to. It simply seems lit up. But seeing it sparkle makes it what you walked across Paris to see. 

All credits for these photos go to my husband,
Moozh Dempsey

The 'sparkle' was gone as it came and we stayed until a merciful chill started to set it, just watching the beam circle around. Strolling back down the Champ de Mars, you walk past the twenty-something girls travelling Europe together and snapping pictures of each other in front of the tower. You pass the small French families eating dinner as their young kids dance and scream in the dusk. You pass the couples sitting and making a moment of it. You cross to the back green, past the uni students and the partiers drinking bottles of wine to themselves. Past the Mur de la Paix, or Mural of Peace, where 'peace' is written in 32 different languages to symbolize life in the third millennium.

Paris is just getting started.

Bonjour! Un croissant, s'il vous plait. Quatre-vingts centimes. Merci au vous. Bientôt!

Get a friggin croissant. Eat it. Repeat. Enjoy.

Things I learned in Paris:
Don't miss the moment. (Are you seeing a pattern?)
Even histories that are so far beyond you can sometimes still feel relevant.
Bread and cheese is a friggin meal man!

Quote from Paris:
Me: Our waitress is so nice.
Moozh: Why?
Me: She got all excited when I got here, "Bonjour! Ca Va Bien!"
Moozh: What does that mean?
Me: I don't know but I said, "Bien" and she acted like that made sense.