Vive la France!!

OK, now y'all get to see why we created this website.

We made a short trip to Paris and Lyon in August. Steve got a chance to take a breath from the daily grind of Arabic, Jenny got a break from budgets and reorganization. It was a lovely trip. The weather was a perfect 65-70, sometimes overcast and with a small spot of rain, but in general just the weather you want to have when you're walking around town enjoying the sights.

The flight in was a bit of a bear -- seven hours cramped up in center seats (ugh!), followed by a three hour struggle to get the heck out of Charles de Gaulle airport (note to La Republique Francaise: RENOVATIONS NEEDED!), get on the RER and the Metro, and get to the hotel.


That said, our hotel, Le Pergolese, was lovely and made it worth the trip. 16th arrondissement (expensive real estate) halfway between Porte Maillot and L'Etoile, convenient to Argentine Metro. Most Parisian hotel rooms are small compared to American hotel rooms, but it was large enough to be adequate and comfortable. Modern decor and a renovated bath, an electric towel warmer, a small TV, a minifridge and a window overlooking the quiet interior courtyard (versus the likely-noisier street), and very nice and professional staff.

Even better, when we came dragging in, they had our room ready even though it was only 11:00 am. We were able to check right in, wash up and take a nap. At some point later, we ventured out for a meal and stuck with the old safe standby: steak/frites, onion soup and a chaser of crepes chocolat for dessert.

This was also the first of many somewhat startling experiences with ... how can we put it gently? ... French bathrooms. Most of them have one common washroom with little closets for the "essential equipment", which seemed to Steve to be just so unfair to the ladies. No privacy or discretion while washing up or adjusting hair or makeup? [Steve: I mean, seriously, we guys, we don't really care. Rinse, dry and go. But I would have thought the women would want something a little less like a bus station. I was surprised.] Jenny reported that some of the facilities lacked seats, i.e. crouch don't sit. Others lacked even a bowl; there was a platform with treads for your feet and a hole in the center.

Jenny urges the women of France to rise up and demand better than this.

OK, getting away from the topic of toilets...

Our hotel was just off this little plaza with everything you could want -- a bank, a bakery (ooh, gooooood bread and sandwiches...!) and a bistro -- and there were a number of other good places within walking distance. The post office, a couple of bistros, a VERY good and relatively-fairly-priced restaurant (Le San Ferdinand), and a little fruit store near Argentine metro (Magasin de l'Etoile) that each night served up the most excellent peaches, nectarines, grapes, strawberries... mmmmm. When you can smell strawberries from ten feet away, they are good. We would pick up Nutella, jam and orange juice, stow it in the minifridge, grab fresh bread and pain au chocolat from the bakery, make tea or coffee in the room, and voila! Parisian breakfast at considerably less than Parisian prices! Each morning, the bakery also laid out an entire display case of sandwiches on fresh baguettes: chicken, tuna, cheese, roast beef, ham, salmon, all with fresh salad and boursin, mustard or other topping. On several days, we bought sandwiches, toted them along, and enjoyed a lovely lunch al fresco in one of Paris' many parks.


On DAY ONE -- ok, AFTERNOON one, since we didn't get out of bed until about 10 am -- we did the requisite and lovely tour of the Tour d'Eiffel. We were afraid of not getting to go to the top when they closed it for "overcrowding". Fortunately, they reopened it while we were on level two. That raised the next problem, buying tickets. The line for paying cash was -- yikes! -- but we discovered they also sell them by credit card from an ATM. New problem: apparently, everyone in France has the new credit cards with the little gold computer chip on the face of the card, and the ATM wouldn't take our MasterCard. We asked a local to buy us tickets in exchange for cash, which he kindly did, so up, up and away we went.

A bit of a tangent, in counterbalance to griping about toilets. When we paid for meals with credit cards, we were impressed to see the waiters bring a portable wireless credit card swiper to the table and take care of the whole transaction right at the table. Apparently, these function with the little chips -- you put your card in the slot, enter your private PIN code to show that it's you, and the charge goes through. They can also work with our regular credit cards with the magnetic strip on the back. We were as surprised to hear that the French have been using these for a decade as they were to hear that we'd never seen them before in the U.S.

There's a perception that the French are generally unkind to tourists, but I have to say, we didn't see it. Everyone we encountered was actually quite gracious and pleasant. A local Parisian bought our Eiffel Tower tickets for us. An RER clerk helped us save over $40 on Metro passes. The hotel staff was positively garrulous, and everyone we met over a store counter was quite helpful and polite. Heck, more people routinely said "thank you for shopping here" in Paris than they do in Washington.

We tried taking a train the RER over to the left bank; track work got us deviated onto one of those "detour buses", but it was a nice ride down Bld. St. Germain. Dinner on the left bank a bit touristy, but acceptable.

DAY TWO took us under Paris, to the tour of the sewers and the catacombs. The sewers are fascinating, particularly the explanation of how the flood control works and how they keep the things cleaned out. The water treatment methods are very modern, but the "plumbing" itself hasn't changed since it was built in the late 1800s, and it still works. The catacombs were interesting but once you've seen them, it's all pretty much just a lot of piles of a lot of bones.

By this time, Jenny's feet were feeling the pain. We took a break at a bistro near Porte d'Orleans then hopped over to Montparnasse to check out Galleries Lafayette and C&A and see if we could find some better shoes. Severely disappointing, and the prices...ouch. [Steve: J.C. Penny merchandise at Nordstom prices.] We did find them, in a store all the way back near our hotel, ironically. A good pair of ASICS sneakers. Well, MEN'S sneakers. Apparently French women do not have size ten feet. And reaching the cash register was ... bracing ... $140 for sneakers that we could get here at DSW for $59.95 left us wondering (not for the first nor the last time during this trip) how on Earth the French afford to live, eat, or wear clothing. We say that with a sense of sympathy, honestly: prices are REALLY high, and it must be terribly difficult for the average person to make ends meet.

We settled in for a pleasant bistro meal near the hotel, on the Avenue de la Grande Armee. We had a good hoot seeing that the bilingual "sandwich board" menu on the street translated "assiette de charcuterie" as "ass of cooked". The owner was a little scandalized to find out what that first word means in English; we suggested "coldcut platter" as a much more understandable (and appetizing) alternative.

On DAY THREE we had a good visit to the Musee d'Orsay on a rainy morning, perfect for being indoors. The building is as much a work of art as the artwork inside it. They let you take pictures of the pictures, surprisingly, so we got a few good ones in the impressionism rooms -- Seurat and the like. The views from the windows over Paris were truly breathtaking.


Great clouds...


The rather long wait left Jenny's feet -- still recovering from the trauma of the day before -- a bit sore, though. We rolled over to Notre Dame and the Ile St. Louis, just for a look, and then headed back to our hotel for dinner at Le San Ferdinand.


We trooped up Montmartre the next day, DAY FOUR, to see Sacre Coeur. The weather, as you can tell, was spectacular.





We trooped down Montmartre toward the east and a Metro stop called "Chateau Rouge". This is a neighborhood apparently very popular with African immigrants, and Steve heard recognizable sounds of Wolof (Senegal) and a couple of other West African languages.

We then dropped in on the Centre Georges Pompidou and the modern art museum. We were a bit disappointed to find that the main exhibit of the museum's permanent collection was closed for renovation and reinstallation. They had a large special exhibit going on communicating through images, with lots of very strange film presentations, installations, "performance art" type displays. It was ... a little avant-garde, to say the least. Some of it was creative, some of it was just weird. A never ending film loop of a rather rough, manual-labor-weathered arm, with the hand repeatedly opening and closing in an attempt to grasp shingles of lead dropped from above the frame. An entire 50 ft x 50 ft room, walled in pink light and pink silk blowing romantically in the breeze of several hidden fans, with three garish circles on the floor the diameter of car tires (wedding bands?) on which red lights audibly clicked on and off, all leading to a very large red shoe. Ten bars of a famous Tschaikovsky piece played over and over, which frankly struck Steve as a waste of good Tschaikovsky.

Steve was on an obsessive hunt for a restaurant he'd eaten in the last time he was in Paris, but couldn't remember exactly where it was. We finally, after dragging about Les Halles for a while, landed on a mini miracle. A little restaurant called "Poulet au Pot" served up their speciality, chicken simmered in its bouillon with vegetables. A generous salad and dessert, at a price that was not hideous.

On our last day, DAY FIVE, we actually took it a bit easy. Age. It creeps up on you. We went wandering around the 16th, dropped in at the Baccarat store and museum (a bit skimpy on the museum, they really ought not to charge for that...) and bought one wine glass. We have a tradition that eliminates the need for wine charms so everyone knows whose glass is whose. We buy one nice, locally-made wine glass wherever we go. Every guest in the house gets not only a different glass, but a glass with a story. We wandered back to Place Victor Hugo and settled in at a sidewalk cafe for a cup of chocolate that turned into a meal (eh alors...). The peace and tranquility was partially upended when the police, fire/rescue brigade and the SWAT team showed up and closed off an adjacent street. Apparently, as the story was told to us, someone was threatening ihs family with a pistol and had barricaded himself inside a residence. The police (and the SWAT team) were settling in to make this a standoff. We don't know how it was resolved, but hopefully, no one was hurt.

We also had a lovely conversation -- in French -- with a lady at the next table who, with inimitable French discretion, begged our pardon but wanted to know if she could impose and inquire where Jenny got her manicure. She was disappointed to hear it was not nearby (Falls Church to Paris, beaucoup kilometers) but impressed that it still looked freshly done after a week. She had to leave, but we enjoyed meeting an actual Parisian and chatting a bit.

The next morning, we got up and headed off to Gare de Lyon to get the TGV (high speed train) to Lyon. We splurged a little ($50) for the first class cabin and an upstairs view of the countryside. We left precisely on time and arrived in Lyon also precisely on time (take that, United Airlines...).

Jenny has dear friends from her student days in France, Eric and Isabelle, and their son, Elvin, and daughter, Candice. We spent three great days in Lyon with them, just enjoying the sights and the company and renewing old ties. Candice, as you can tell from the photos, is a lively spirit!!








Lyon is a magnificent city, France's second largest. All the infrastructure and amenities of Paris at 80% the cost and 25% the stress. We saw some lovely Roman aqueducts, a Roman amphitheatre that is still used today (Eric said they saw Sting perform there...) and wandered about the old and new parts of the city.







We saw in both Lyon and Paris something called the Smart Car -- with parking the way it is and gas at $3 a gallon, seriously folks, we should think about this...it looks small, but even Steve can fit into it, it's pretty decently sized inside. Not sure we'd want to take one on the Beltway, though we did see quite a number of them safely zipping around the roads of Paris.

Alas, our trip came to a close too soon. We headed out to Lyon Airport, jumped a quick flight to Munich, and then caught a Lufthansa flight back to Dulles Airport. The seats were better (767 chairs appear to be slightly wider than 777 seats...) and we ended up saving not only the cost of going back to Paris, but $200 each on the airfare leaving directly from Lyon.

We briefly considered upgrading to business class and, in fact, went to the Lufthansa counter in Lyon to see if they had any seats. They did. Which they offered to us for the minor sum of 3,300 Euro. $4,200. EACH. $8,400 total. They wanted to cancel our existing tickets (and charge a cancellation fee) and charge us for two brand-new, one-way business class tickets. When we got on the plane, there were at least two if not three business class seats available. Seems kinda a waste. If United/Lufthansa had asked for $200 or $300 each, we'd have gladly paid it. They could have made another $600 bucks instead of flying with empty seats. Oh well...

Still, we had a good flight back and pretty much conked out as soon as we got home.

And then woke up at 4 am... ouch!

S & J