Ooo la la!
I know you are all thinking to yourselves, "Huh...? Wha?? Deb's actually posting?????? Wow, I thought she must be dead or something." Yep, like I tell those people who try to keep in touch with me personally, I am a total slacker when it comes to this sort of thing. I suppose getting it out within a couple months is pretty good, for me. Ahem.
So I of course had a fabulous time in Europe with wingedkat! Here are the pictures, in no particular order. The password is "friends".
It began in an exciting manner, with Jennie's flight from Minneapolis being cancelled due to a blizzard. I told her, "That's what you get for living in the arctic." [We were flying to Paris separately, from our local airports, and meeting there.] So she was moved to a flight the following day (Tuesday 03/14), hoping the weather allowed. The exciting part being, we were supposed to fly to Dublin together Wednesday, her new flight was scheduled to arrive in Paris like two hours before the flight out, and she had the paper tickets to Dublin. Tee hee! So I went on to Paris, and fended for myself alone that night. Apart from the chaotic construction-filled weirdness that is CDG, it went well. I got a room all to myself in the hostel, even with a double bed. I walked around near the hostel on the tiny Parisian streets, had some hot chocolate, and tried to reacclimate my ear to hearing French. There are a couple pics of the hostel on the photo site. I would highly recommend it to anyone traveling to Paris; it's more like a hotel than any other hostel I've ever stayed in. The next morning I went back to the airport hoping to somehow find Jennie in the CDG mess. CDG is a very strange airport, made even more so by all the construction obfuscating signs and walkways. The other main caveat is that neither of us have cell phones that work in Europe. So it was blind luck that after walking around for a while I just happened to see her asking for information, after she had been trying to find out where our Dublin gate was for the last hour. We were both, needless to say, outrageously relieved and happily made our flight to Dublin.
Dublin was very fun. The hostel we stayed in had terrible bathrooms but a lot of friendly people. It was a typical hostel, nothing like the one in Paris. We spent most of our time in pubs drinking beer, which is the right and true thing to do while in Ireland. Under threats of being thrown out of the country, I asserted that I didn't like Guinness, and tried a couple other, lighter Irish beers. I found that I like Kilkenny, which it seems I can't get in the US. Ah well. I'll just add it to my list of foreign alcohol that I may never enjoy again without crossing an ocean. We went through the Jameson Distillery (much to ironmelf's pleasure), and tried to go to Guinness but the line was way too long. I totally forgot about visiting Bailey's, but I did enjoy some in the pub to toast another revolution around the sun. Needless to say, the whole city was packed with tourists for St. Patrick's Day. We met these two Italian guys who made us pasta. There was green everywhere. I was wearing a green shirt, but I was so bundled up against the cold no one could tell. We did visit St. Patrick's Cathedral, which was pretty impressive. The parade was awesome, but we were all freezing, having to stand outside for hours in sleety snow. They had these crazy huge puppets and great costumes. And then we flew back to Paris the evening of the 17th.
Of course Paris was amazing. I have been there before, but Jennie had not, so I convinced her she simply had to go see the usual things (La Tour Eiffel, Notre Dame, L'Arc de Triomphe... etc.). We walked down the Champs Élysées, drank a lot of wine, and enjoyed lots of delicious French food. We met Nicolas (ironmelf's rogue Frenchman--last photo) and went on a bateau mouche tour down the Seine. We had been hearing about lots of protests regarding a labor law, and while on the boat we saw a bridge filled with protesters (next to last photo). Nick said that they tend to get violent after a while, burning cars and breaking windows and so forth. That night we went to a techno dance party in the Bastille district (where some of the protests had been happening, with much caution from Nick). It was a lot of fun, and nothing bad happened. On the way there we saw a caravan of police trucks, filled with cops and sirens blaring, heading in the direction of the bridge. We thought, they must have gotten violent! Upon our return to the US, I heard that those same protests had been all over the international news. Kind of neat, in a scary sort of way. We also went to Montmartre, former hangout of the likes of Picasso, van Gogh, and Amélie. I had some crème brûlée and cracked it with my spoon. The visit to Le Louvre was incredible of course. I was disappointed that I didn't have a chance to go the last time I was in Paris, so this time Jennie and I were both determined to go. We had to split up to see everything we each wanted in a single day. I didn’t remember where to look for the DaVinci Code stuff, so unfortunately I didn’t see the inverted pyramid thing in person, but I did see some of the paintings described in the book. There were a lot of rooms where they didn’t let you take pictures, so I saw a lot of other famous things besides those on the photo site. Notre Dame was impressive; there was some kind of church service going on when we got there. How would that be, to say that you go to church there! The priest was projecting over the loudspeaker, so the place was filled with a French sermon. There was also this really cool sculpture in one of the alcoves (third/fourth line of photos). The display next to it was in French, which I could roughly translate to relate this story: A man died, and his wife was there to mourn. She had not been able to say goodbye to him before his death, and so because of her love, an angel kept his soul in his body, returning him to life so the two could have one last farewell. Death is holding a lit candle, the flame representing the man's temporary flickering life. The story goes that as soon as the man and woman have said their goodbyes, the flame goes out, and the soul departs for good. Neat! There was another amazing sculpture at Père Lachaise (pictures on page 5 first row). We only had a short time there, but it was incredible! We barely scratched the surface of what there is to see; we could have spent days there! The sculpture was a monument "to the dead." The figures looking into a passageway I would take to represent souls ready to pass into the next realm, with mourners surrounding them. The lower relief was even more moving. The female image with arms spread may represent a mother or goddess figure, protecting her children (the family laying at rest/dead) who are in the "land of the shadow of death." Amazing. We went to dinner with Nick (first line of photos) the night before going home. I ordered a sweet white dessert wine; I can’t recall the winery name but the production region was Coteaux du Layon. The funny thing was that after the waiter had brought it out, the man sitting at the table next to us leaned over and asked why we had ordered that particular wine. We told him it was because I liked sweet wines, and that one was sweet. He said that he was the senator from that region, and that we had made a good selection. Hehe!
Too quickly the day came that we had to go home. The ironic thing was, Jennie missed her flight! With all the construction at the airport, we didn’t arrive early enough to figure out where to go in time. So she came in a day late, but still ended up getting the full vacation time by having to leave a day late. We had actually separated to check in (my flight was a couple hours after hers and on a different airline) and couldn’t find each other again (since she had to go elsewhere to reschedule her flight for the next day). So it was a rather anti-climactic and solitary departure. I heard later on that she went back to the city, saw a movie (entirely in French of course, of which she understands only a few words), got a hotel, then came back to the airport in the morning and flew home without incident. Second try’s the charm on her flights, evidently. My flight back was fine, I watched Ice Age, which was both funny and sad, and listened to music. The international plane cabins had TVs in the back of the seat in front of you, with movies, games, and music, as well as interactive maps. It was really cool. On the way to Europe I watched Aeon Flux, which was pretty cool. During the flight back I discovered this CD in the entertainment selection, which I had to immediately buy back home because it’s so good. It’s a really great addition to my dance/techno music. On the domestic flight back to Tampa I sat next to a guy from Portugal who wanted to talk my ear off, so he could practice English. He and his friends were visiting the US for the first time, so we talked quite a bit, but finally we did agreed to let each other sleep, since I’d been awake for like 20 hours and he’d been awake almost twice that. So at long last I finally arrived home, into my darling ironmelf’s waiting arms.
Some general notes:
--I remembered a LOT more French than I thought I would, and was able to understand and speak pretty darn well, for not having used my skill much at all for like 8 years. (I did get a review CD, which was ok, but I only used it a little bit before leaving.) It’s just due to being immersed in the language, and basically being forced to use it. The same thing happened when I went to France after high school. I had a decent knowledge (more than most of my class) and so ended up being a sort of translator for the rest of the students (when we weren’t with our teacher that is). My usage just got better after being there and constantly using it for a while. Alas, I am not fluent by far.
--Jennie said it was really frustrating sometimes to be in the dark about what was being said or what was on signs or whatever, even more so because I did understand. She didn’t like having to follow me around when I could understand where to go and she didn’t. (Admittedly, I was bad about explaining ‘this means this, so we go that way’ or ‘this menu item means this’ sort of stuff.) I said next time she should drag me around Germany, where I would be in the same uncomprehending daze as she was.
--Everything in Europe is really tiny. Everything in America is really big.
So I of course had a fabulous time in Europe with wingedkat! Here are the pictures, in no particular order. The password is "friends".
It began in an exciting manner, with Jennie's flight from Minneapolis being cancelled due to a blizzard. I told her, "That's what you get for living in the arctic." [We were flying to Paris separately, from our local airports, and meeting there.] So she was moved to a flight the following day (Tuesday 03/14), hoping the weather allowed. The exciting part being, we were supposed to fly to Dublin together Wednesday, her new flight was scheduled to arrive in Paris like two hours before the flight out, and she had the paper tickets to Dublin. Tee hee! So I went on to Paris, and fended for myself alone that night. Apart from the chaotic construction-filled weirdness that is CDG, it went well. I got a room all to myself in the hostel, even with a double bed. I walked around near the hostel on the tiny Parisian streets, had some hot chocolate, and tried to reacclimate my ear to hearing French. There are a couple pics of the hostel on the photo site. I would highly recommend it to anyone traveling to Paris; it's more like a hotel than any other hostel I've ever stayed in. The next morning I went back to the airport hoping to somehow find Jennie in the CDG mess. CDG is a very strange airport, made even more so by all the construction obfuscating signs and walkways. The other main caveat is that neither of us have cell phones that work in Europe. So it was blind luck that after walking around for a while I just happened to see her asking for information, after she had been trying to find out where our Dublin gate was for the last hour. We were both, needless to say, outrageously relieved and happily made our flight to Dublin.
Dublin was very fun. The hostel we stayed in had terrible bathrooms but a lot of friendly people. It was a typical hostel, nothing like the one in Paris. We spent most of our time in pubs drinking beer, which is the right and true thing to do while in Ireland. Under threats of being thrown out of the country, I asserted that I didn't like Guinness, and tried a couple other, lighter Irish beers. I found that I like Kilkenny, which it seems I can't get in the US. Ah well. I'll just add it to my list of foreign alcohol that I may never enjoy again without crossing an ocean. We went through the Jameson Distillery (much to ironmelf's pleasure), and tried to go to Guinness but the line was way too long. I totally forgot about visiting Bailey's, but I did enjoy some in the pub to toast another revolution around the sun. Needless to say, the whole city was packed with tourists for St. Patrick's Day. We met these two Italian guys who made us pasta. There was green everywhere. I was wearing a green shirt, but I was so bundled up against the cold no one could tell. We did visit St. Patrick's Cathedral, which was pretty impressive. The parade was awesome, but we were all freezing, having to stand outside for hours in sleety snow. They had these crazy huge puppets and great costumes. And then we flew back to Paris the evening of the 17th.
Of course Paris was amazing. I have been there before, but Jennie had not, so I convinced her she simply had to go see the usual things (La Tour Eiffel, Notre Dame, L'Arc de Triomphe... etc.). We walked down the Champs Élysées, drank a lot of wine, and enjoyed lots of delicious French food. We met Nicolas (ironmelf's rogue Frenchman--last photo) and went on a bateau mouche tour down the Seine. We had been hearing about lots of protests regarding a labor law, and while on the boat we saw a bridge filled with protesters (next to last photo). Nick said that they tend to get violent after a while, burning cars and breaking windows and so forth. That night we went to a techno dance party in the Bastille district (where some of the protests had been happening, with much caution from Nick). It was a lot of fun, and nothing bad happened. On the way there we saw a caravan of police trucks, filled with cops and sirens blaring, heading in the direction of the bridge. We thought, they must have gotten violent! Upon our return to the US, I heard that those same protests had been all over the international news. Kind of neat, in a scary sort of way. We also went to Montmartre, former hangout of the likes of Picasso, van Gogh, and Amélie. I had some crème brûlée and cracked it with my spoon. The visit to Le Louvre was incredible of course. I was disappointed that I didn't have a chance to go the last time I was in Paris, so this time Jennie and I were both determined to go. We had to split up to see everything we each wanted in a single day. I didn’t remember where to look for the DaVinci Code stuff, so unfortunately I didn’t see the inverted pyramid thing in person, but I did see some of the paintings described in the book. There were a lot of rooms where they didn’t let you take pictures, so I saw a lot of other famous things besides those on the photo site. Notre Dame was impressive; there was some kind of church service going on when we got there. How would that be, to say that you go to church there! The priest was projecting over the loudspeaker, so the place was filled with a French sermon. There was also this really cool sculpture in one of the alcoves (third/fourth line of photos). The display next to it was in French, which I could roughly translate to relate this story: A man died, and his wife was there to mourn. She had not been able to say goodbye to him before his death, and so because of her love, an angel kept his soul in his body, returning him to life so the two could have one last farewell. Death is holding a lit candle, the flame representing the man's temporary flickering life. The story goes that as soon as the man and woman have said their goodbyes, the flame goes out, and the soul departs for good. Neat! There was another amazing sculpture at Père Lachaise (pictures on page 5 first row). We only had a short time there, but it was incredible! We barely scratched the surface of what there is to see; we could have spent days there! The sculpture was a monument "to the dead." The figures looking into a passageway I would take to represent souls ready to pass into the next realm, with mourners surrounding them. The lower relief was even more moving. The female image with arms spread may represent a mother or goddess figure, protecting her children (the family laying at rest/dead) who are in the "land of the shadow of death." Amazing. We went to dinner with Nick (first line of photos) the night before going home. I ordered a sweet white dessert wine; I can’t recall the winery name but the production region was Coteaux du Layon. The funny thing was that after the waiter had brought it out, the man sitting at the table next to us leaned over and asked why we had ordered that particular wine. We told him it was because I liked sweet wines, and that one was sweet. He said that he was the senator from that region, and that we had made a good selection. Hehe!
Too quickly the day came that we had to go home. The ironic thing was, Jennie missed her flight! With all the construction at the airport, we didn’t arrive early enough to figure out where to go in time. So she came in a day late, but still ended up getting the full vacation time by having to leave a day late. We had actually separated to check in (my flight was a couple hours after hers and on a different airline) and couldn’t find each other again (since she had to go elsewhere to reschedule her flight for the next day). So it was a rather anti-climactic and solitary departure. I heard later on that she went back to the city, saw a movie (entirely in French of course, of which she understands only a few words), got a hotel, then came back to the airport in the morning and flew home without incident. Second try’s the charm on her flights, evidently. My flight back was fine, I watched Ice Age, which was both funny and sad, and listened to music. The international plane cabins had TVs in the back of the seat in front of you, with movies, games, and music, as well as interactive maps. It was really cool. On the way to Europe I watched Aeon Flux, which was pretty cool. During the flight back I discovered this CD in the entertainment selection, which I had to immediately buy back home because it’s so good. It’s a really great addition to my dance/techno music. On the domestic flight back to Tampa I sat next to a guy from Portugal who wanted to talk my ear off, so he could practice English. He and his friends were visiting the US for the first time, so we talked quite a bit, but finally we did agreed to let each other sleep, since I’d been awake for like 20 hours and he’d been awake almost twice that. So at long last I finally arrived home, into my darling ironmelf’s waiting arms.
Some general notes:
--I remembered a LOT more French than I thought I would, and was able to understand and speak pretty darn well, for not having used my skill much at all for like 8 years. (I did get a review CD, which was ok, but I only used it a little bit before leaving.) It’s just due to being immersed in the language, and basically being forced to use it. The same thing happened when I went to France after high school. I had a decent knowledge (more than most of my class) and so ended up being a sort of translator for the rest of the students (when we weren’t with our teacher that is). My usage just got better after being there and constantly using it for a while. Alas, I am not fluent by far.
--Jennie said it was really frustrating sometimes to be in the dark about what was being said or what was on signs or whatever, even more so because I did understand. She didn’t like having to follow me around when I could understand where to go and she didn’t. (Admittedly, I was bad about explaining ‘this means this, so we go that way’ or ‘this menu item means this’ sort of stuff.) I said next time she should drag me around Germany, where I would be in the same uncomprehending daze as she was.
--Everything in Europe is really tiny. Everything in America is really big.