Thursday April 14th Out and About in Paris

We have been to several interesting Paris locations over the past few days.  They were not necessarily the types of places you might visit if you are only here for a few day, which is one of the things that is nicer about a longer trip, the ability to take things slowly and go off the beaten track a bit. 

One place we visited was the Cluny Museum of the Middle Ages. It is a rather small museum that can be gone through in about an hour or so.  The building itself has an interesting history. The original structure is that of the main house of the abbots of Cluny and was built in 1334, and rebuilt in 1510. However, the original structure itself was built on top of something even older – the site of Roman baths, dating to the third century.  The building has been a museum since 1843.   Normally the Roman baths can be visited, but they were closed while we were there.  I was extremely disappointed in this as I thought that would be really interesting to see.  There are a lot of medieval artifacts in the museum and I particularly enjoyed seeing some actual illuminated manuscripts.  Each delicate hand-lettered and illustrated page was carefully encased and protected, but you could look through an entire book page by page.   The pages were onion skin thin and a true beauty to look at.  I also enjoyed seeing some very small ivory carvings that took the shape of stamps but with images from the New Testament.

 Katie enjoyed seeing the headstone of Nicholas Flamel, the famous alchemist.  We both enjoyed the Museum’s most famous holding, a series of six tapestries of the girl and the unicorn.  Duplicates of these tapestries hang in the Gryffindor common room in the Harry Potter movies!  The colors in the tapestries were deep burgundies, golds and greens despite their ages.  Each tapestry shows a depiction of the girl and the unicorn exploring one of the five senses, and there is a bonus 6^th tapestry that no one quite knows the exact meaning of.  Each tapestry also shows many other animals and it was fun to pick out the rabbits, birds, monkeys, dogs, lions, goats and other animals in the background. Katie was really spell bound by the tapestry and did not want to leave the room for quite a while even after I’d grown tired of it. It could have been the Harry Potter connection, but it seemed to me that she was just entranced by the tapestries themselve.  The room displaying them is round with nothing but the tapestries there in low light, and she walked the room three times looking at them with rapt attention to detail.

Another excellent stop was the Paris catacombs.  The catacombs have gotten a lot of attention lately in National Geographic and some other magazines, and are on the must see list now for a lot of people.  This led to a huge line outside the entrance.  However, despite this increased attention, the operators of the catacombs have not given in to the lure of a quick euro and strictly limit the number of people in the catacombs at one time.  The area underground is quite large, and the number of people allowed underground at one time is 200.  As someone comes up, someone else may go down.  While this led to the huge line outside the door, everyone was patient and well behaved while waiting.  We waited just over an hour to be allowed to descend. 

Once in the catacombs, the limit on people was really nice as it lead to a very deserted and creepy feeling.  You went straight down on a spiral staircase 130 steps, about six stories straight down and it felt like you were drilling into the center of the earth.  The catacombs were built in the late 1700s.  Prior to this most people in Paris were buried in mass graves and by the late 1700s these mass graves were creating extremely unsanitary conditions and polluting the drinking water.  So the graves were exhumed and the bones relocated into the existing tunnels of some quarries.   The bones from each mass grave are grouped together with a large stone marked indicating the name of the region from which they came.  The arrangement of the bones is unusually artistic, with skulls and leg bones used to create extremely attractive and yet macabre displays.  Viewing the arrangement made me feel deeply sad and yet touched at the same time. Instead of feeling that the dead were being violated by the use of their bones in these decorative arrangements, I had the feeling that they were cared for deeply and dealt with respectfully. Each bone was placed so carefully and it seemed lovingly into place that it gave the feeling of gentleness in this otherwise morbid place.

The limits on visitors meant that as Katie and I wound our way through the passages, we were never in sight of more than a handful of people at a time, and were often completely on our own. Katie was fascinated, but yet a bit spooked, making me go first through most of the passages.  There were marble slabs with quotations about death every so often, many of which I could translate, and which I found comforting, but Katie found disturbing. Overall, I found the catacombs to be extremely touching and one of my favorite stops so far.

After the catacombs, we checked out the Pantheon. This is the site of the original Foucault pendulum and the burial place of France’s greatest men and women.  I thought it was pretty boring, but honestly after the catacombs, not much would hold up.  We saw the graves of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Victor Hugo, which meant nothing to Katie, and the grave of Marie Curie, which staggered her.  She loves Marie Curie and holds her up as a real role model, which is great.  She was really touched by seeing her grave site, and the flowers that people still bring to her.

Finally, we spent some time in the Jardin des Plantes, the site of the Paris zoo, some beautiful gardens and a handful of small museums.  The Paris zoo is the oldest zoo in the world. So since the Philly zoo is the oldest zoo in the US, we have now been to the oldest zoos on two continents.  The Paris Menagerie had an interesting start   - it was founded with the animals which had been part of the royal court at Versailles after the ousting of Marie Antoinette.

 It is a small zoo, with no big African animals.  The most notable animals were ostrichs, a snow leopard and some orangutans.  But it was a beautiful day, and it was fun to be with Katie at the zoo, even looking at common animals.  Katie is picking up a lot of French and the animals names were great vocabulary for her.  In fact she has learned enough French to notice a label “lapin” at the boucharie yesterday and get upset since it meant people were buying and eating rabbit.  There were a lot of field trips of preschools at the zoo and we enjoyed trying to understand the little kid French as they jumped up and down in excitement.  “Regardez!!! Un Orang- utan!!”

Across the park we went to a small museum , the Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy. Really we went in because I had to go to the bathroom really badly, but once inside it looked interesting so we bought a ticket and stayed.  Basically this was a museum of animal skeletons.  But really it was fascinating.  All the signs were in French so we had a lot of fun looking at the skeletons and deciphering what they were, from dolphins to lions to rhinos to giraffes to whales!  Similar types of skeletons were grouped together, hence the “comparative anatomy”. There was a small dinosaur section, but the US collections of dinosaurs are much better.  The regular skeletons were fascinating to decipher and look at in comparison to each other, and all displayed in one enormous room, two stories tall just crammed full of bones.  Although we picked the museum out of biological necessity, it was actually one of my favorite places so far.  That and the catacombs, so I think I’ve discovered I have an odd fascination with bones.

April 14th - Paris Living

Well all my worries about unstructured time here in Paris seems to have been for naught. We are really getting along just fine, and have settled into a daily routine.  There is generally no need for an alarm here, which is nice, and we wake up about 7:30 or 8 each morning.  The noises of the apartment building coming alive in the morning do sometimes wake us up earlier although we are getting used to the noises.  Katie has never lived in an apartment before and was surprised at how you can hear all the other people.  This is an older building and in the evenings you can hear the upstairs neighbors walking around, toilets flushing, people walking up and down the central stairs, muffled TVs and conversations.

We have a nice relaxed breakfast of muselli and yogurt, baguette with butter and jam and café au lait for me and just au lait for Katie. While eating, we usually check on our blogs for comments and flip through facebook to see what people at home are up to.  Around 8:30 we start our homeschool day with a math lesson – we are currently working on graphing equations, using lessons provided by Katie’s math teacher at home, followed by a science lesson using the online textbook from her middle school. We use the internet to look up any questions that arose from the previous day sightseeing trips – today we read about Joan of Arc since she was mentioned at the Pantheon where we went yesterday. We always jot down questions as we go about our day. 

After that, Katie works on her blog and checks her email.  She does that independently and I am not allowed to peek at her email. She’s been getting messages regularly from her friends, so her worries about them forgetting her seem to be for naught, although she does really miss them all.  The whole friend situation is very different for Katie than for me. If I can get together with a friend once or twice a month at home, I’m doing great, while Katie is used to eating lunch with her friends every day.  She’s holding up well though and their emails help. I’ve been Skyping with Paul regularly so that is great for me. 

Once school is done we do yoga and other exercises and Katie practices her karate. She is trying not to lose any progress since she hopes to be picked to test for her brown belt soon after we get home.

We head out for our activity for the day between  11 and 12.  We’ve gone through several guide books and have picked a list of things we want to do while we are here.  Each day we pick one or two and head out.  We are usually out until about 5 or 6pm.  On the way home we stop at the supermarche for our daily shopping, at the boulangierie for bread (Baguette), which is Katie’s responsibility to buy on her own, and yesterday for the first time we were brave enough to try the boucherie for some meat. We got already prepared chicken cordon blue, which was very tasty.

Katie likes some down time when we get back home and usually spends some time reading or playing on the Nintendo DS or iPad while I work on my blog. We eat dinner around 7pm and it stays light here until around 9pm.  After dinner sometimes we play card games or board games (on the ipad) and sometimes we watch TV on the laptop using hulu (I have to log on through Villanova to get an American ip address first since I can’t access hulu with a French ip).  We are keeping up with Amazing Race, Survivor and Modern Family.  We typically call it a day around 10 pm.  It’s a pretty nice routine and we are really enjoying it.  Katie and I are also reading some of the same books in a little book club in the evenings and discussing them together.  So far we have read Diary of a Young Girl, Da Vinci Code, and are currently working on Little Women.  I was named after the Amy in little Women, but I have to say I really prefer Jo.

We are now getting ready for a couple of visits, which will add a little variety to our routine.  Paul arrives tomorrow for a week, and after Easter my mom will be here for a week.  We are looking forward to those visits and what excitement they will bring.

April 12th - Where's that Disney magic?

Tuesday April 12^th  - Disneyland paris

So we decided to experience Disney Parisian style.  It is relatively easy to get to Disneyland Paris, just take the one of the regional rails to the end of the line, about 90 minutes total travel time and the rail station is just yards from the Disney entrance.

 I was very curious to see how Disney plays out overseas, and since we have been to Disney numerous times, we have a good basis for comparison.  Katie is 11 and to the best of my knowledge this is her 8^th time to Disney.  Her first time was at age three, and her most recent trip prior to today was a joint Disney/Universal studios trip to Orlando five months ago for my 41^st birthday.  We have done Disneyworld Orlando just about any way you can think of. We’ve been to all four Disney parks, both Universal parks and Sea World.  We’ve stayed at moderate priced Disney hotels, at pricy Disney hotels, at the competing Nickelodeon Suites, in a condo, at off-site hotels near Disney, at off-site hotels near Sea World and at off-site hotels near Universal.  And I’m not even mentioning all our times to our local amusement park – HersheyPark.   So we tend to know our way around a theme park.  With all of this experience, I can say hands-down that Disney is head and shoulders above all the others.  Disney manages the entire experience in a way that makes you happy and able to believe in the magic.  Disney is hyper-organized and no detail ever goes overlooked.  So I was surprised to find this magic missing at Disneyland Paris.

I’m not sure why this Disney Park was different from the rest. I love Disney. I want to believe!  So I don’t think that I went into it with a skeptical attitude.  Some of it may have been the language barrier, but not all of it. This park when built was called Euro-Disney, and is still marketed throughout Europe.  In line we regularly heard other patrons speaking English (lots of Brits in attendance), Italian, Spanish and German, plus I heard some Slavic languages as well.  Many of these guests were not French speaking, and although the main language of the park is French, it is easy to find help in many languages and all signs and announcements are made in both French and English.  The Disney cast members all wear little mouse ear pins with the flags of the countries whose languages they speak in addition to French and English. So I don’t think it was the language barrier.

Some of it was perhaps cultural, and in this case, our extensive Disneyworld experience could work against us. For instance, most of the Disneyworld rides exit into a gift shop. Perhaps this is considered gauche in France, and the rides here did not do this.  In fact, there was significantly less merchandise overall in the park, and the vendors were not particularly enthusiastic about selling what they did have.  This did bother Katie and me.  We actually like exiting into the gift shops – we’ve been culturally conditioned as good American capitalists – and really missed it.  Katie was super surprised that even Pirates of the Caribbean didn’t exit into a gift shop and remarked on it.  Where was all the cool pirate stuff??    We came prepared to buy a souvenir, but left empty-handed.

Some of the odd requirements that we experienced I’ll also chalk up to cultural issues.  Everyone (!!) was required to wear a seat belt on the carousel.  Which is odd, since it was also the     s l o w e s t       carousel I have ever been on.  The horses were really cool but since they moved so   s l o w l y   it ruined a lot of the fun. I love the carousel but this one was just wrong. 

Katie felt the same way about the teacups.  From line we wondered why no one was spinning their tea cups very fast. Once we got on the ride it was clear that the cups simply can’t be spun the way we do them at home.  It was as though the emergency brake had been applied to the system and no one could really move.  Again, very disappointing.   Do the laws prevent certain speeds of rides?  Is seatbelt use on carousel horses mandated?  They checked us pretty carefully to make sure we were all belted up, so I think so.  The Stars Wars themed simulator Star Tours was also moving at much slower rate than at home. Is this mandated or cultural?  Do Americans need their thrills bigger and better than the rest of the world?

So I’ll admit that some of it was cultural expectations, and some of it was also disappointment that while the park seems at first glance to be a copy of the Magic Kingdom with many of the same rides, it is significantly smaller and some of our favorites were left out.    No Mickey’s Philharmagic, no Winnie the Pooh ( or great Pooh Bear gift shop), no Aladdin’s Magic Carpets, no Toontown and no Jungle Cruise, among others.

But bigger than either of those, were the problems that seem to plague the park, things that led to annoyance and irritation to the level that I haven’t seen happen at any other Disney park, and led to the experience seeming much more like a regular day at any amusement park, like Universal or Six Flags, rather than a day at Disney. 

An unusual number of rides experienced problems that affected our visit, from having to change simulators at Star Tours, to being stopped midway on the Haunted Mansion (or as they call it Phantom Manor). Overall we experienced breakdowns, or observed them from the line on Star Tours, Phantom Manor, Autopia, Big Thunder Railroad and It’s a Small World which is a pretty big number of affected rides.  Autopia is the racecars that the kids drive with adults as passengers around a set track. It’s one of Katie’s favorites, and a ride I have never seen break down.  But here we saw at least five cars just stop working and an attendant needed to go out on the track, pop the hood and restart the engines!

Plus the crowd control and fastpass management was the worst I have ever seen at Disney.  Peter Pan’s ride is always incredibly popular, and only one fastpass machine was working.  It was at the point where I thought the 30 minute line for the ride was shorter than the line for the fastpass machine.  The same thing happened at Big Thunder railroad where we waited over 20 minutes in the fastpass line.  Other places the crowd control was really poor. This would really never been seen at Disneyworld and I’m not sure why it was OK here. Does Disney run this park to different standards than would be acceptable at home? It was readily apparent that it just wasn’t up to normal Disney levels, and that really took the shine off it for me.  Even Katie could tell it was fun, but not super.

But that being said, we did enjoy the day, and found a few things that were *almost* better than their Orlando counterparts including:

·         It’s a Small World had a great section on the US and Canada that isn’t a part of the ride at home.  The Canadian boy and girl on the hockey rink were great, as were the sets of NYC and Hollywood.

·         The starry sky in Peter Pan’s ride was great.

·         Alice in Wonderland’s labyrinth garden was a fun new addition, and we hit several dead ends in the maze. Katie really liked some fountains that seemed to leap from one spot to the next.

·         Parts of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride had really great sets that were different than those in Orlando.

Overall, I though one of the oddest differences occurred at lunchtime.  Katie picked out a table while I ordered our lunch, including coffee for me.  I paid for the lunch and moved to the pickup counter. The cast member working there asked me if I wanted my coffee “now or later”.  Really?  I know that Europeans like to linger over coffee after eating lunch, but at Disneyland??   Will they really decide to go eat their hamburger and then get back in line to pick up their coffee afterwards?  Choosing to wait in line twice seemed like a really bad choice so I took my coffee “now”.   On the bright side of things, with my purchase of coffee for “now” I got a coupon for use at any restaurant in the park between 3:30 and 5:30 for another coffee, so I could also have one “later”.  Which I did.

April 10th - Sunday Afternoon in the Park

Sunday April 10^th

Today I decided to let Katie pick our activities.  She decided on the pet market on Isle de la Citie.  This island in the Seine that features Notre Dame cathedral hosts a flower market most days of the week, but it becomes a pet market on Sunday.  My animal loving girl had to see this.  Ascending from the metro we walked right into a mad scene of parakeets and birds of all kinds in cages lining the pedestrian walkway.  Walking along we found more birds than you could ever imagine, mainly parakeets, but others as well.  We saw chickens of all sorts (both roosters and hens), ducks, doves, and even big fat plump pigeons.  I thought of getting one for my brother who is afraid of pigeons, but decided against it.  We also found all kinds of small furry animals, including mice, hamsters, gerbils, rats, guinea pigs and rabbits.  Katie was in heaven at a large open box of baby rabbits and guinea pigs, immediately picking out the rabbit that she wanted me to buy her. It took all I had to convince her that we were not allowed to bring an animal home from Europe.  “Katie, we can’t even bring home a banana!” I argued with her.  She begrudgingly walked away from the bunny whom she had already named “Cutie Pie Snuggles”.

We then walked along the Seine going into a number of pet shops and looked at the poplar French pets. Not one poodle to be seen, but plenty of Jack Russell terriers, Yorkies and Chihuahuas. Fascinatingly, the cats were double the price of the dogs at these stores.  The prices for the cats, all purebred, hovered between 1500-2000 Euros (!!!) while the dogs were around 700-1200 Euros.  Who would pay $3000 for a cat at home? That would be insane, people give cats away! 

My favorite display was a case of about 100 mice with a large spinning wire wheel.  At least 50 mice were on the wheel at one time, spinning in a frenzy.  Mice were on both the inside and the outside of the wheel and the ones on the outside kept flying off every so often.  We watched it in fascination as the mice that flew off clambered right back on for a wild ride.  They seemed to love it.  We also saw some pets that we don’t sell anymore at home like Amazonian rain forest parrots, small turtles and ball pythons.

In the afternoon we went to the children’s puppet theater at Luxembourg gardens.  While my survival French is holding up well here, it is up to even a children’s performance. The cost of the tickets was 9 E and I gave the seller a 20.  She asked me in French if I could give her one more euro and she would give me back a ten.  I stared at her blankly and she switched to English. I could just hear her thinking, “you can’t understand me and you are going to a French play? Good luck!” 

But even though we couldn’t understand the dialogue, much of the humor of the puppets was universal as we followed the story of the famous puppet Guignol as he rescued a princes captured by pirates.  We loved how the puppet involved the children in the performance, turning to the audience and asking them questions.  They were laughing so hard as he talked to them, shouting out directions.  At one point he needed to jump off the boat and kept asking the kids to count to three “Un, deux..” they’d count and he’d interrupt them “Un moment, I forgot my hat” Again, “Un, Deux, “  “I forgot my rope,” over and over five or six times until the children were shrieking in laughter.  It was a very French way to spend a Sunday afternoon in the park.

Eating our way through brussels

Saturday April 9th

So I decided that Katie and I should take a day trip to Brussels.  Now, it is a whole ‘nother country and all, but really, it’s not that far away, only 90 minutes.  It’s really like going to New Jersey for the day, just hopefully nicer.  Using my handy dandy tour guide I figured out how to book the tickets online and arranged to pick up them at the train station.  According to the guide you need to use the SCNF website and indicate that you speak English, but are not from the US.  If you indicate the US, it switches you to RailEurope, which only works if you haven’t left the US yet.  So I entered “Argentina” as my home country and made my reservations.   

We got going early in the morning, well in advance of our train, because I don’t like that last minute panic that can ensure if you are lost in a huge European train station with no idea where to pick up the tickets, and the train is pulling out in ten minutes.  I really didn’t want that to happen.

We were leaving from Gare du Nord train station which is one of Paris’s largest.  We arrived way off  in the basement somewhere on the RER which is like a regional commuter train – can’t let those little trains fraternize with the big boy engines like the Eurostar that goes through the Chunnel, and the Thalys which goes internationally.  I was supposed to pick up the tickets at something called the SCNF ticket area.  We tried looking for that  - no deal.  We tried following directions to the Grand Lignes, assuming that meant the big boy trains, but ended up outside on the sidewalk.  We came back inside and found a small SCNF ticket booth, but that was for Paris tickets only.  The lady working there told us in broken English to go upstairs. Believe me, I would if I could find the way!  We ended up outside again, trying to get “upstairs” and then finally found a stairway that took us up to the Thalys track, but way outside the main station.  We hiked back along the track, and found a Thalys information desk – finally, we’re in the right area.  We waited for the agent, but she told us that we were still in the wrong place!  “You need the SCNF ticket area,” she said.  “I KNOW!!” I thought impatiently, but instead, politely asked her “Ou Est le SCNF ticket booths?”  She pointed over her shoulder and we were off again. 

Luckily the ticket booths were in sight, only 50 yards or so behind her.  We waited in a long line for an agent while disaster scenarios played through my head.  “What if I’ve done it wrong? What if the confirmation code doesn’t come up? What if I need proof that I am from Argentina?!”  Fortunately, the confirmation code did work, my tickets were printed out, and no seemed to care if I was from Argentina or not. I had a moment of panic when I thought I couldn’t find my credit card, but then meekly found it in my wallet.  

Tickets in hand I checked the time, and we were still actually in great shape!  The extra time had come in handy and we had a full 40 minutes until train departure, and time for a coffee.  Collapsing into a chair at the bistro, I said, “Well, I was able to pull that off huh?”   Katie just looked at me.  I continued, “You know, booking the tickets, finding the train station, not losing my cool as we tried to find the ticket counter.”  She just looked at me more.  So I continued on. “I will now take compliments,” I announced.  “You may choose from the following: Great job, Mommy!  Mommy, you are so awesome! Mommy, you are the most incredible Mommy ever!...” I continued on until both she and I were collapsing in laughter and the tension from the ticket booth ordeal drained away.

I made Katie work on a math worksheet  - you can home school anywhere and even a busy Paris train station is a fine place for a lesson on adding positive and negative integers, much to Katie’s disappointment. However, the promise of chocolate later pulled her through the lesson.

The train boarded a few minutes before 9 am, and we stepped happily into first class, due to a nice last minute promotion on the website – take your child to Brussels weekend.  Buy a kid ticket and accompany them at reduced rates. I’m not sure why the Belgians want us to bring our children to Brussels, so I think I’ll keep a close eye on Katie while we’re there, but anyway, the first class ticket with the promotion was less than the 2^nd class ticket and even included breakfast!  Munching on our croissants we surveyed the beautiful French countryside rushing past on our short trip.

We arrived into Brussels at the station on the southern edge of town and needed to transfer to another train to get to central Brussels.  You’d think this might be well marked since hundreds of people need to make the transfer daily, but of course not. Wandering around my second large European train station of the morning, all I could think was “You’ve got to be kidding me!”  No signs pointing to trains to “Bruxelles Centralle” – look – I can even handle signs in French. I know you speak it here.  Toss me a bone.  We tried the metro, since a lot of people were heading that way but that was the wrong choice and the ticket sellers pointed us back to the main train station. We thought about the information both, but it had a sign that said “no tourist information”. So we headed to the tourist information booth. Incredibly, it had a sign up that said “No train information.”  Apparently, Belgium likes to compartmentalize its information.  So a decision needed to be made – did we need tourist information or did we need train information. Weighing our options, I decided that we needed train information so we stood in line at the station information desk.  A rather dour older man told me that the train leaving in 3 minutes on track 8 would take me there.  “Where do I get tickets,” I rushed, now in a hurry.  “Your  ticket works – no additional ticket needed,” he growled as we took of flying for Track 8.  You’d think they would make this a lot easier and then the dour old man wouldn’t have to give the same information over and over again all day at people in line at his booth.

Arriving finally in Central Brussels, we headed right for the Grand Place, where the flagship chocolate stores are located.  Our first destination was Godiva.  The four main chocolatiers in Belgium are Godiva, Neuhaus, Leonidas and Galler.  There are dozens of other shops, both these four are the big players, each with their own specialty.  Godiva of course is well-known worldwide, while Neuhaus is the oldest, in business since 1857. Both Godiva and Neuhus offer handmade candies.  Galler specializes in less- sweet much darker chocolates, also handmade, while Leonidas offers machine-made chocolates, but at half the price of the other three. 

The stores are regal and stately with the chocolates displayed individually behind glass like jewels at Tiffany’s.  The salesladies are stately and regal, and the entire place gives off the air of “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” 

We enter Godiva first, based on familiarity, and also because it was the first one we saw.  You buy the candy by the piece and we decided to sample two pieces at each shop to find our favorites.  At Godiva we tried a raspberry truffle and a lemon filled egg.  Both excellent!!  We wandered next door to Neuhaus, still wiping the Godiva chocolate off our mouths. At Neuhaus we decided on an a chocolate coffered toffee with a raspberry cream center, and a small foil cone about 3 cm long filled with piped in chocolate hazelnut cream, called a coronet.  Outstanding!!!! 

We headed next for Galler, although we were concerned with the “less sweet” nature of their candies.  We entered the store and were promptly ignored by the ladies behind the counter. We looked around a little bit and were intrigued by some candies that looked like high end lipsticks, slim and black with brightly colored tips, but since we couldn’t get anyone’s attention, we wandered out again.  Leonidas was bustling, and there we picked three candies due to the lower prices.  We firs tried a white chocolate with orange filling.  I consider white chocolate to be the bastard child of chocolate, and usually avoid it, but Katie enjoys it so we gave it a try – actually not bad.  We also had another coronet for comparison with Neuhaus, but it paled in comparison to the handmade chocolate.  Finally we tried a jellied sugar pear shaped candy that was actually quite good.  Comparing our favorites we found that mine was the Neuhaus coronet and Katie’s was the Neuhaus raspberry toffee, making it our shop winner.   

Although it was now noon, after all that candy we decided we should do some walking before lunch.  Following our walking tour of the old city we found that the Brussels inhabitants (Brusselians? Brusselers?  Brusselites?)  in addition to  loving chocolate also have a love of bathroom humor.  Maybe it’s all that Belgian beer.  Grand Place is the central medieval looking square and it is surrounded by large stone buildings topped with statues.  According to our tour, there is an old legend surrounding the statues. Looking at the first building you see three statues all in conversation with each other.  According to the legend they are discussing who farted.  The next building over, the man on horseback exclaims, “It was him!” and points across the square.  Turning, you see another statue who cries, “It wasn’t me, it was him,” and points to the other end of the square.  Turning yet again, you see a statue with a downcast head, looking guilty and admitting, “It was me.”   Add this to their most famous statue, Mannekin Pis, and you have a very vivid insight into the Belgian mind.

Mannekin Pis is two blocks down from the main square and is a 2 foot tall bronze statue of a little boy peeing.  Even more oddly, it was built to provide clean water for the area – you collected the water coming out of the statue for your drinking water – how weird is that?? These people are strange!  The statue is very famous and much beloved, and is usually dressed in one of his more than 700 outfits.  We were hoping to see him dressed up, and being about 2 weeks to Easter, we thought he might be bedecked in Easter finery.  However, upon approaching the statue we found him dressed in …….a vampire outfit, just adding to the surreality of the situation.  O….K…..

After watching the crowds jockey for position to get their photos with the odd pissing vampire boy, we wandered off in search of lunch.  We found our way to La Rue des Bouches, or the street of the mouths.  This is a pedestrian only cobblestone street lined with cafes and outdoor seating.  The specialty of Brussels after chocolate and bathroom humor is beer and mussels.  We picked a restaurant where kids eat free and I could get a steaming bucket of mussels, frites and a beer for only 12 euros. Katie could pick off the kids menu, which provided much different options that at home. No chicken nuggets here.  She could have ¼ roasted chicken, a small bucket of mussels, or an omlette.  I think my adventurous nephews would love this type of kids menu. Katie played it safer with an omlette and a basket of fresh bread.  She said it was delicious.  We relaxed sitting in the warm sun on the charming cobblestone street as I worked my way through both the beer, the fries and the mussels.  The bottom of the bucket had a delicious briny broth with some sort of greens and some celery and tasted of the sea. I implored Katie to try it telling her, “It tastes like the ocean.”  But as a strong swimmer who has tasted the ocean as she tumbles around in the waves, that description less than thrilled her.  “Salt water?” she exclaimed, “That doesn’t sound good!”  But she did try it, afterwards saying, you know it did taste of the ocean, but was still good.

After lunch we waddled off to the Museum of Musical Instruments. Situated in an old art deco department store, MIM fills four floors with displays of instruments from around the world.  You don headphones and as you approach the display case, you hear samples of the instruments in your headphones, playing musical selections from around the world.  Unfortunately, as you leave a display case your headphones are filled with earsplitting static.  We continued this way though the museum, alternating between beautiful music and headache inducing static.  Interesting concept.

Before heading back to Paris, we indulged in one more Belgium specialty – waffles.  Specifically, waffles covered in strawberries and then drenched in rich Belgium chocolate.  We shove down as much as we can before giving up.  “Next we come to Brussels we should split a waffle,” I say to Katie, and stuffed to the gills she nods her agreement.

Friday April 7th Pere Lachaise cemetary

April 7^th

We toured a cemetery today – Pere Lachaise.  It was interesting to see the style of this cemetery as compared to other cemeteries I’ve seen . This one was extremely crowded – more than 70,000 people are buried there, and many of the graves have vaulted tomb structures built on top of them – like row upon row of little houses. The cemetery is huge, with many wandering streets, and with the tombs built 5-6 feet above ground, it takes on the appearance of a very busy village.  It definitely did not have the feel of a quiet resting place, but rather a busy medieval town, what with all the stone.  I don’t like my neighbors that close to me, and Katie and I both agreed that we would not like it to be our final resting place.  We both wish to be cremated instead.
The main attraction was just the cemetery itself, which was fascinating, but it does have many famous residents.  We saw the graves of Moliere, Oscar Wilde (pretty lurid and covered in lipstick kisses – which really grossed Katie out), The French writer Colette, Frederic Chopin, Jim Morrison and Georges Seurat. To our great disappointment, Seurat’s grave was not covered with pointillism designs. That would have been so cool!

April 6th - Da Vinci Code and Macaroons

Thursday, April 6^th

We are relaxing into Paris living.  We are now quite adept at using the subway and navigating our neighborhood.  We know where to get food, snacks and bread and have been trying a wide variety of French sweets.  Today we had the most amazing cookies – macaroons, but not the American coconut macaroons. These looked like miniature whoopee pies, about the size of a quarter. They come in at least a dozen different bright colors, in flavors such as apricot, pistachio and raspberry.  We saw a gentleman walking through the left bank region today with a plastic sleeve full of them and were instantly intrigued. “What were those?” Katie gasped.  To our delight two shops down we found out.  There was a huge display case full of them and a woman dispensing them into the plastic tubes with small tongs.  We ordered apricot, raspberry and of course chocolate.  The first bite was an explosion of flavor in my mouth. How could something be both crispy and chewy?  The crispy skin gave way to a chewy layer and a small crème center.  OH MY GOSH!  My taste buds were screaming in delight.  These alone were worth the trip. 

What else have we been doing?  Well it all pales in comparison to the macaroons, but we did go the Louvre yesterday. 

We had started the day by wandering through the gardens of the Rodin museum.  It’s a steal at 1 euro to access the sculpture gardens outside the museum.  The statues were fun to see, but Katie was surprised to see the Thinker.  “Isn’t that in Washington D.C.?” she asked warily, quite familiar with the Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian movie. Upon learning that there are 33 copies of the Thinker because Rodin cast the statues using molds, she promptly called him a cheater and lost interest in his artistic merit.  So we moved on to a stop of her choice:  the Paris Sewer museum.  We paid our 7 euro and descended into the actual sewer line near the Seine.  How they figured out people would pay for the privilege of going into the sewer is a mystery to me. We saw some displays on water treatment and storm water management, and many large signs warning us to touch NOTHING, and to wash our hands thoroughly at the end of the tour. NICE!  Most of the time it was OK, but at times as we wandered beneath the streets the smell got pretty strong and the water flowing in the pits got pretty solid looking.  At one point some water (I hope it was water) dripped on my head and I freaked out.  Overall it was interesting and yet simultaneously nasty. The stuffed animal rats for sale in the “gift shop” (which was really not much more than a table set up in the sewer) was a nice touch.  We washed thoroughly in the WC and headed to the Tuileries gardens.

We have taken to carrying our Kindles with us, and relaxed in the gardens for an hour or so reading.  We enjoyed Nutella crepes, a baguette sandwich (Amy) and a croque monsieur (Katie). Around five pm we headed into the Louvre through the glass pyramid. The pyramid is kind of interesting, but in the end not really that impressive.  We had a tour on the kindle that we followed through the museum, hitting all the highlights.  The evening time was a great time to go because although there were people around, it wasn’t packed.  We were able to get pretty close to all the “big name” works of art, including front row at the Mona Lisa  It’s really intriguing to me as to why the “big three” are the big three.  What makes Mona Lisa, Venus de Mila and Winged Victory that much better than the others?  Katie was particularly unimpressed with the Venus de Milo. “Why her and not  one of the other Greek or Roman statues?” she asked looking around a huge room filled with Greek statues.  In fact Venus has a huge seam across her hips that doesn’t match from slab to slab well at all so I can see her point.  Who decrees these works are the best?  On the other hand Katie was thrilled with Winged Victory, which honestly I don’t really get. I was more interested in the French guard screaming “NO FLASH” at the tops of her lungs every 30 seconds to absolutely no avail.  At what point will she give up?  Does she dread having a shift at Winged Victory rather than in some nice quiet room, or does she look forward to confrontation with thousands of tourists in dozens of languages? How many languages can she scream “NO FLASH” in?  Is “NO FLASH” the same in French and English or did she think that Americans (or Brits or Canadians) are the worst offenders?

Katie and I both just read the Da Vinci Code so I tried to get her to lie on the floor in the Grand Gallery like Jacques Sauniere and the Vitruvian man but she wasn’t buying that. She also didn’t want me to do it. We finished the highlight tour in about 90 minutes and without crowds it was pretty relaxing.  Interestingly the guard at the Mona Lisa didn’t scream “NO FLASH” at all, and everyone was using flash.  I think he had checked out mentally.  We finished by the ticket offices inside the glass pyramid and wandered down a connector hallway which had a Starbucks and a post office.  Katie sent a post card to her class from the Louvre, and I took a picture of a Tibetan monk in orange robes buying a coffee at Starbucks.  The pyramid inversee was also there to check out. 

We caught the subway home and let me tell you – taking the subway at 7pm from the busiest region in Paris is decidedly unpleasant. Wall to wall people – it was so hot in the car I could hardly breathe and it’s only April. It must be one of the circles of hell in August.

Today we wandered over Luxembourg gardens and ate lunch at a little café where the waiter did not speak English to me.  However, we got through the meal just fine.  It was a real highlight for me because Katie got to order an Omlette au Fromage. Sadly for those of us who grew up listening to Steve Martin comedy albums it was not an “Omlette du Fromage” which is bad French.  Those of you who’ve heard the albums know the bit I am referencing!!!   It was a thrill though and I am still tempted to order an Omlette du Fromage just because.

The gardens were full of Parisians in the middle of the day on a Thursday just lying in the sun.  When do these people work?  The number of people who come outside to picnic at lunch and lay on the grass in any street meridian is amazing. I love it here.  Katie and I found lounge chairs, took out the kindles and relaxed in the sun.  After a couple of hours we walked around the park a bit to check out the marionette theater, the chess area, the ping pong tables and of course, the ice cream stand.

We then used the kindle to take a walking tour of the left bank area, including St. Sulpice, also from the Da Vinci code.  We saw the “Rose Line” and the obelisk where the albino monk cracked the floor. It seems the church is less than thrilled about all the Da Vinci code tourists coming through and they have a sign at the obelisk denoucing all the claims made in a “recent best seller”. The other highlights of the left bank included the delicious macaroons and many other amazing patisseries. It was hard to not buy something at them all.  But we did make a note of where they are for another day…..