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After two weeks in Paris, it felt really good to lie down on our own bed last night. We had a great time, and hope to be back in the future, but now it is time to relax and enjoy some of the Chicago/Winnipeg summer.

For our last post we decided to jot down our highlights and some of the things we learned over the past two weeks.

Adam's highlight: 3 parts actually, the meal at Robert and Louise's was great, drinking coffee in the Jardin du Luxembourg was relaxing, and finally after 9 years getting to travel and spend some quality time with Andriana.

Andriana's highlights: food and wine at Robert and Louise, Berthillion ice cream, the female artists exhibit at the Centre Pompidou, fireworks at the Eiffel Tower, the view of Sacre-Coeur from any distance or angle or time of day, enjoying such an enchanting city on this be-lated honeymoon with my husband of 3 years, and sharing bottles of wine at various cafes and the conversations that ensued with Adam.

As we flew, walked, trained and drove around, we kept a list of lessons we wanted to remember, either pertaining to travel, ourselves or life. Here is a snippet of some of our musings.

1. Learn the language. We made our way around easily enough, but we both felt we would have met and conversed with more Parisians had we been more confident in our french.
2. Buy a good camera. In the future, if we plan to invest in plane tickets, accommodations,  food and entertainment at fabulous places, we want to be able to take pics to remember it by. Our camera sucked.
3. Buy the Zagat (restaurant guide) book. As we realised early on, we were more interested in finding great places to eat than anything else. We have Zagat for Chicago and we love it. Not sure why we didn't think to pick one up for Paris. A friend once told Andriana that he had some of the best meals he has ever had in Paris and unfortunately some of the worst. We were lucky, 2 bad meals (not including airline food) and the rest were great. We didn't always know the name of the restaurant or cafe we stopped in, but we remembered the food.
4. It's fun to not have a plan sometimes. Very few days did we plan out in advance, but instead chose to do what we had the energy or patience for on any given day. Our spontaneous touring style led us to some of our best meals and most memorable spots.
5. Pack less than we think we will need. You'd think after nearly a decade of following each other around from city to city, we'd have a good sense for how much to pack. Nope. Aunt Katrusia recommended laying out everything we wanted to bring and then put 1/2 of it away and pack the other half. We should have listened. Our saving grace was that we stayed in one city so we only had to pack up and carry everything on the trip there and the trip home.
6. Blogging was a great way for us to reflect and record our days, with the added bonus of keeping us in contact with our friends and family. That helped to make this trip very special.

Below is map of the highlight from some of the places we saw and restaurants we ate at. If you click on it, it will take you to my Google maps account with a little more info on each place.

View Paris 2009 in a larger map

We can't wait to see everyone in person and catch up. Later.

Off to the airport

After a quick clean up around the apartment and one last trip to the local bakery for breakfast, we are about to head for the airport. Our flight leaves at 1:30 pm Paris time and we arrive in Chicago 6:50 pm local time, via Montreal. Now to figure out how to get there. We feel pretty confidant about riding the metro already, we just need to map our our route. Hopefully this time the jet lag will be easier to get over.

Our last day, alas...

I write to you on our last night in Paris. I can tell that Adam and I are so fulfilled by this trip in many ways, but I can also tell we are pretty fatigued. We ended our fabulous honeymoon with the meal of all meals. After watching chef Anthony Bourdain's premier episode of "No Reservations" on the Travel Channel, entitled "Why the French Don't Suck", we were inspired to go to Chez Robert et Louise for dinner. What an experience!! Totally accessible, old-school French cuisine in a character-filled dining room.

Anthony Bourdain's episode made our mouths water, with clips of Cote de Boeuf being cooked to perfection in their open, wood-burning fire pits, along with garlic and parsley sauteed potatoes, and a salad. That is exactly what we had. After watching the video again tonight after dinner, we realize that we sat at the exact same table as Anthony did!! How neat! We started off our palates with succulent escargot and a couple of chilled Heinekens. Heaven. Adam had no idea how to actually eat the snails, but our friendly table mate, and I say table mate because we were literally sharing a table with another party, showed us how.

And then our beef came. What a vision. Flame-crisped outer edges, and medium-rare, melt-in-your-mouth center. Sprinkled with some fleur de sel (rock salt), and freshly ground pepper - beyond heaven. I haven't even gotten to the potatoes, which we had to order second helpings of. The best potatoes to date, smothered in garlic, parsley, and sateed in duck fat. I hummed and hawed a little about ordering a second helping, but ultimately, there was no doubt. It was out first real meal of the day, and our last night in Paris. The lovely, friendly waitress suggested a smooth red wine to accompany our meal - a 2005 Pecharmant, L'Ancienne Cure - one of our best wine-drinking experiences on this trip. Time for some more pictures!

We ended off with a classic French dessert, creme brulee, and two espressos.

What and atmosphere. You can get a sense of it in the next pic, as well as seeing our chef working hard, and facing us at the right moment, in the background:

If you would like to see the video that inspired tonight's meal, check out the short clip below (from about the 1:30 minute mark until 5:10).

We are now relaxing and digesting in our apartment. What a lovely place this has been to stay. Our day earlier today was mostly spent on cleaning our apartment and packing up. Our landlord came by before dinner to make a last overview of the place and to make sure everything was in tact and in order. He came by with a box of caramels in tow, after presenting us with a bottle of champagne on our first day! What generosity. It's the little touches that make you feel at home when you are so far away.

We figured that we would not have visited this area that our apartment is located had we not been staying here. There is no real major tourist attraction here, in the 5th Arrondissement, or the Latin Quarter. It gave us a place to experience how the locals live, and also allowed us to enjoy an area full of life, and not flocked with tourists!

We plan to post one or two more postings to wrap up our trip. Time permitting, we'll post one before we head to the airport tomorrow and one final one when we land in Chicago, the details of which we haven't quite settled on yet. Thanks again to everyone who's read and commented/emailed. You've helped make this trip a fantastic one.

Our second last day

As we got home so late last night, we didn't have the energy or coherence to write a decent blog post, so we'll try to make up for that today.

Yesterday was Bastille Day, a French national holiday that we knew very little about. As a result we needed to do a little research in preparation for our evening.

Bastille Day is the French national holiday, celebrated on 14 July each year. In France, it is called Fête Nationale ("National Celebration") in official parlance, or more commonly le quatorze juillet ("14 July"). It commemorates the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789; the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille fortress-prison was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern nation, and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution.

link: Bastille Day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Since we knew we were going to be out late we decided to relax during the day. We started the day with a nice brunch on Rue Mouffetard, a busy little street a short distance from our apartment. After brunch we just kept walking in an attempt to explore more of the city south of where we were staying.

We made a modest dinner in our flat and then headed out to the Eiffel Tower to watch the evening's fireworks. Parc du Champs de Mars was packed, as were joined by thousands upon thousands of Parisians and tourists eagerly waiting for the fireworks to begin.

As soon as it got dark, the fireworks started and lasted for nearly 30 minutes. People cheered, oohed, awed and were entertained as the Eiffel Tower was turned into one giant sparkler. Once the fireworks were over, everyone made their way towards the center of the city where celebrations were happening. It seemed to us that every person in the city was out, cheering and enjoying the late night.

We decided to walk back, as the line to get onto the metro was longer than we were willing to wait. The map above was the route we took on our walk to the Seine river. It took us over an hour as we were standing still for large portions of time due to the thick crowd. We finished the night by drinking wine on the cobblestone walking path across the river from Notre Dame cathedral.

After a good night's sleep and a quick breakfast, we hopped on the metro and made our way to the Louvre. We were anticipating long lines and were pleasantly surprised to find that we were basically able to stroll right in.

To say that the Louvre is an immense collection of art is a massive understatement. We were blown away by the size and depth of the amount of art on display.

We made our way past the obvious attractions (Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo) but found that we spent the majority of our time in the Oriental, Egyptian and sculpture portions of the museum. We also enjoyed seeing Napoleon's apartment and the African exhibit.

It was particularly neat to see Aboriginal art from Canada on display in the North American exhibit. We took pictures of some of our favorite pieces, but you'll have to checkout the slide show to see all of them.

After the several hours wondering the Louvre, and not seeing nearly all of it, we decided to head out to the courtyard to cool our feet. We've walked a lot the past 10 days and are starting feel it in our toes.

We finished our evening with a stop on the Ile Saint Louis for some Berthillion ice cream. It was so good, Andriana is insisting we go back tomorrow.

Turning in early tonight, as we just got back from eating crepes and drinking Heineken in the square outside our flat. We are looking forward to relaxing on our last full day in Paris. We hope to sleep in, do a little shopping and most likely a repeat trip to the Berthillion ice cream shop. Sleep tight friends and family. See you soon.

Bastille Day!

Tonight's post is going to be extremely short because it is 3 am in the morning and we just got back from Bastille Day celebrations. We went down to the Eiffel Tower to watch the fireworks, which were great, and followed that up with a trek across the city on foot, with several thousand other people. We managed to find a nice quite, yet busy spot on the banks of Seine to enjoy a bottle of wine we had tucked in our bag. After enjoying some time by the river with many other celebrators, we made our way home and are now getting ready to sleep. We hope to wake up in time to make it to either Musee d'Orsay or the Luvre, but we'll see how early we get up. We'll post more about today tomorrow. Miss you all. Night.

Wearing out our shoes on our 8th day in Paris

I write this post for you...with fabulously sore calves.  It is the evidence of how much Adam and I have walked over the last couple of days, and consequently, how much we've seen!  We are thinking that we might need relaxation time after this vacation! 

Today,  we set our sites on the Centre Pompidou. It is Paris's "inside-out" modern art museum, notably the largest in Europe, with air conditioning ducts and escalators on the outside. 

The first gallery we saw was entitled "elles@centrepompidou",  a vast representation of women artists of the twentieth century.  This is where we spent most of our time.  It was incredibly moving and insightful to see the artistic output of women over the last century, as freedom of expression and also in response to the struggles they have gone through and still go through to have their art valued in the same way as their male counterparts. 

There were many fascinating pieces.  The one below is constructed entirely of toothpicks and stands at about 3 feet tall.  The artist's goal was to use the strength and stability of the toothpicks and essentially balance them against eachother to create this square structure.  She made the point of not using anything artificial, such as glue, to hold it together.  Only 4 people were allowed in the room at a time, due to the fragility of the piece.  What a shame if it was ever bumped!
Many more cool pieces can be seen in the slide show. 

We made our way to the top floor of the Pompidou, via the outdoor, but enclosed escalator, in order to get a great view of the city.   Seeing the Sacre-Coeur up on the hill never seizes to take my breath away.  This view on the top floor was our last stop in the Pompidou before heading down to the Fontaine de Stravinsky in the courtyard below, but not without briefly walking through the cool but expensive gift shop.  We gave our feet a little rest as we sat by the colourful statues in the fountain.

 

After Centre Pompidou, we directed ourselves towards the charming Marais district, jam packed with museums, shops, and cafes.  It being after 9 pm, a lot of the shops were closed, but the restaurants were quickly filling up.  We stopped for dinner at Little Italy Trattoria.  This definitely goes down as one of our favorites.  It was so busy, we sat at a table, just about elbow to elbow with the diners next to us.  Adam had a fantastic gnocchi dish, and a nice, light Italian beer, Moretti, to accompany it.  I started with an aperatif, the house Kir, and then enjoyed Tagliata balsamico.  It was a mouthwatering dish of balsamic-marinated, medium-rare steak, with pasta in a light balsamic sauce, with greens.  I can't not show you a picture!  We ate up the tiramisu so fast, that there is no picture to show of it! Trust me, it looked and tasted delicious.

Tomorrow's plans are a no-brainer.  We are going to party hard and celebrate Bastille Day alongside the locals, and undoubtedly, alongside tourists like ourselves.  Bonne nuit!

At a walking pace

We started out today with the intention of visiting the Musee d'Orsay, so after breakfast we caught a train that dropped us off within a few blocks of the museum and made our way there. We knew we were in trouble the minute we came around the corner of the museum and saw the line to get in stretching about 1/2 a kilometer in front of us. We really didn't feel like wasting our afternoon standing in line so we altered our plans.

We were just across the river from the Jardin des Tuileries, which is sandwiched between the Louvre and the Champs-Elysees, so we decided to make the short trek to the garden to plan our next move.

Since we had the whole day in front of us we decided to walk along the Champes-Elysees and see if our legs would get us to the Arc de Triomphe. It seemed like a long walk, but we had the time and we both wanted to see the Arc and Champs-Elysees, so started moving west. The nice thing about the walk is that it took us through the Musee de l'Orangerie, past the Petit Palais and the Grand Palais, and all along the main shopping street in Paris.

 

  

 

After walking over the bridge and through the garden we were quite tired so we decided to take a little nap on a bench.

 

 

The walk along the Champs-Elysees was interesting as it was filled with boutiques that sold things like expensive clothes, watches and cars. We stopped at the Toyota shop to see the next generation Prius. It was neat. We also stopped at Laduree, a famous pastry shop, and purchased a box of macarons for us to share and cake for me (although I gave Andriana a bite).

After a stop at a quaint little cafe called McCafe, we made our way to the Arc Triomphe. The site was impressive and we arrived as the French Military were in the process of making a presentation over a monument to fallen soldiers. Andriana even got a picture with one of them.

After visiting the Arc, we caught the metro nearby and took it to the Jardin du Luxembourg. The park was covered in statues, manicured trees and filled with chairs for people to lounge on. And lounge they did with books, wine or loved-ones in hand. It was one of the most relaxing evenings we've spent here. Sipping espressos at the garden cafe and snapping pictures filled several hours.

 

  

The large building in the picture above is Palais du Luxembourg and is the palace where the French senate is located. We took a lot of pictures in the garden, so if you would like to see more check the slide show.

By the time we got back to our apartment, cleaned up and went for dinner it was almost midnight, hence the reason for the late post. We finished the day with a wonderful bite at a popular hangout called Cafe Delmas. I had a delicious tomato and mozzarella salad with cured ham, and Andriana had the French Onion soup she had been craving since the beginning of our trip, accompanied by a bottle of Bordeaux. It's late, so we're heading to bed. We're turning off our alarms and will get up when ever we get up.

 

 

Before Dinner...

We've had a jam packed day today and are treating ourselves to a nice dinner (if we can get a table!) but before we left, we just wanted to thank everyone for their comments and e-mails. We've had a great time so far, but we do miss you all terribly and you are all helping to make this a great honeymoon. Just throwing this out there, but we do turn our Skype on for about 1/2 an hour before we go to bed :)

We plan to post about our day after dinner. Until then...

Commenting...

Hello everyone,

I've noticed that a few people have tried to make comments on our blog (we can see when people click on the comment link) and for some strange reason the comments are not making their way to us to see or to post. I encourage you to keep trying as I play with the settings of the blog to see if something is not set correctly. Good luck!

Many steps under our feet

A quick post before bed tonight, as we were out late having dinner. We started the day in the 3rd district, exploring around the Opera Bastille. While Andriana checked out the opera house, I sat down for an espresso in a nearby cafe.

We spent most of today on our feet exploring Montmartre, in the 18th arrondissement on the north west side of Paris. Montmartre rests on a hill upon which sits its most famous basilica, the Sacre-Coeur.

The white basilica was originally conceived in 1871 and completed in 1914 and provided us with a fantastic view of Paris. The surrounding hill was swarming with people, pan handlers, and we assumed pickpockets, but once we were able to make our way up the hill to the basilica and get inside, the crowds thinned out nicely.

We were not permitted to take pictures inside the basilica, but after climbing the 237 steps to the upper dome, we were free to snap away.

 From the top of the dome we were able to get some fantastic shots of Paris. Climbing up and down the steps surely gave us a workout and made us a little dizzy too.

Once done at the Sacre-Coeur, we made our way along Rue Norvins towards Square Suzanne-Buisson, supposedly one of the most romantic corners of Montmartre. Along the way we wondered past the square of Marcel Ayme, named after the writer. Below you can see a sculpture based on one of his short stories.

I guess the person who described Square Suzanne-Buisson as romantic had a different idea of romantic, because when we got there, it was dominated by a jungle gym and about 20 children running and playing. Needless to say, at this point our feet needed a rest and we welcomed the entertainment of 5 young boys playing soccer in front of us. They were using a red ball as one of their goal posts, and more than one toddler, parent in tow, came by to kick the red ball. This didn't seem to phase the  5 older children, and provided us with some additional entertainment.

After our rest, we made our way towards the Cemetery of Montmartre where numerous writers, poets and artists are buried. At this point it was late and we were hungry so we decided to make our way back to the metro stop that would take us home. On our way, we came across the famous Moulin Rouge, but unfortunately, we chose buying food for the rest of our trip over the $350 cover charge to get in. Tonight our exciting plans are to do a load of laundry and sip champagne as we continue to celebrate our (3 year delayed) honeymoon. Good night.