(no subject)
Curran and I are back in Ithaca after a lovely Christmas in France.
We set off for Georgia on the 20th. Never one to break from tradition (or maybe I'm just a procrastinator...), I still had one last paper to finish, so I worked on it during the day while my parents were at work and Curran was reading Persuasion. On Saturday night we went to my cousin's house for Christmas dinner--unfortunately she was sick with stomach flu, so we all went home pretty early. When we got home I was dying to open presents (we took a Christmas Eve flight to Paris, so no opening presents on Christmas morning). It may be materialistic, but I still get really excited about presents, no less so than when I was a little girl, really. It was a tantalizing wait while my parents did various things--I should have been working on my paper, but I hung around close to the Christmas tree instead. Finally, everyone was ready. My parents liked their presents--an Andrea Bocelli cd for Mom, the new Mark Knopfler cd for my Dad. I got some lovely clothes and the opera Persee on DVD from my parents, and a book and cds (including the new Iron and Wine cd) from Curran. Curran's present was a new overcoat, something he's been needing for a while, and he looks so sharp in it it's like another gift for me.
My brother's new cat, Judy, came with him to my parents' house, so I was getting to know her all this time. She was quite scared of me at first--the first day she jumped off a stairwell to escape from me. By the second day I was beginning to win her over, and soon she was hanging out with me on the couch and letting me pet her. She's very cute--a bit more of a normal cat than the family cats, though I hate to say it. After a bit of initial shyness (and after all, the family cats are terrorizing the poor thing daily), she's very nice to everyone. She even likes other cats--she tried to make friends with our cats, and she and a neighbor cat seemed to be making friends from either side of the glass door in back of the house.
On Sunday we caught our flight, and we arrived in Paris on Christmas Eve. We had just enough energy to walk down the street for crepes before we all took an afternoon nap. We had some misfortune that evening. Curran had an allergic reaction after accidentally eating some walnuts, and my mom came down with my cousin's stomach flu. (She wasn't the only one who had caught it--my cousin's mother and brother did (the latter had to be hospitalized), as well as my other aunt and uncle and two of their three kids. My mom figured out that everyone who held my cousin's baby caught it. Dad, Patrick, and I ventured out in search of a restaurant that was open on Christmas Eve, and finally found one. Patrick made the waitress very happy by ordering steak and foie gras, but Dad and I kind of pissed her off--he had a cheese salad and I had vegetable crudites. It wasn't our fault--they just didn't have any vegetarian main courses. Dad even ordered two glasses of wine, and I had tea and dessert (and tried to have white coffee, but she forgot my order). But still, Patrick got a friendly "bon appetit" whereas she put down Dad's and my plates without a word.
Mom's illness only lasted about 12 hours, so we were able to start going out the next afternoon. We went to Pere Lachaise Cemetery to find Abelard and Heloise and Jim Morrison. We saw Notre Dame (Curran's first French cathedral) and heard an organ recital there; we had dinner at a nearby vegetarian restaurant, Le Grenier de Notre-Dame, and for once the waiter was perfectly happy with me. I had wine and vervain tea and was suffused with a warm, cathedral-y sense of well-being.
We took a day trip to Chartres, which I enjoyed immensely. (The only trouble was that it was pretty cold inside and out, even with coats and hats and gloves--it made me appreciate how nice it would have been to have fur-lined gowns in the Middle Ages.) I looked at the sculpture outside and the stained glass inside and nearly drove Curran crazy wanting to look at the windows pane by pane. Curran and Patrick and I walked through the aisles and around the choir screen and tried to decipher the life of the Virgin depicted there (me: "Ok, that one is Mary and some people, like...praying..."). It was all apocryphal legends so our Catholic education didn't help me or Pat. At last the lady selling tickets to the tower returned from her lunch break, and we went up. (By the way, I *love* that at 25 I still get a youth discount in France.) It was really well done--they let you go into several little rooms and balconies on the way up, and they have lots of windows so you can look at the church from multiple angles and elevations. I loved getting different views of the buttresses and catching sight of gargoyles. At the top there was a walkway all the way around the tower, but Patrick and I were only able to make part of it. It was a very narrow walkway, albeit railed, and a sheer drop. We met up with my parents and had vin chaud and grog type drinks at a nearby cafe, and then walked around the back of the cathedral through the park. It was an immensely satisfying day--I really can't get enough of cathedrals.
Then next day Patrick took a day trip to Reims and the rest of us saw the Sainte-Chapelle and the Louvre and walked down the Champs-Elysees. The Louvre had remains of the old Louvre castle, which was good fun, and it had Abbot Suger's porphyry eagle vase. I wasn't expecting it, and when Curran and I came on it I audibly gasped.
On Friday we took a train to Carcassonne. We took naps almost immediately on arriving there. Curran and I slipped out for an evening stroll and his first look at the castle and walls, and then he and Patrick and I ventured out for a late dinner with cidre brut. The next morning we were the first ones up, and we had breakfast at the hotel pretty much as soon as it was open. They were playing some really lovely music--I inquired about it at the desk and was told that it was a group called Oc. Mom and I went to a bookstore to find road maps for the day's activity, a day trip to Albi to see the cathedral, and I was able to buy a copy of the Oc cd there. We headed out to Albi and arrived at the cathedral around 2ish. It was fortress style with high solid walls and windows at the very top, a striking contrast to Chartres and especially the Sainte-Chapelle. There was a fabulous late-medieval mural of the pains of hell. On the way back we drove through the gorges (I didn't even know they had gorges in Languedoc), stopped to explore a ruined church (fenced in, sadly--Curran was going to climb over but then some hunters arrived), and finally saw the Chateaux de Lastours, four ruined castles on a single rocky outcropping.
The next morning Curran and I woke up at 5:30, our sleep schedules having gotten off track when we woke up at 4:30 to catch the train on Friday. We couldn't get back to sleep, so we took a pre-dawn romp on the city walls and then walked through the streets. It was just us and the cats most of the time, although a few people were just beginning to get up by 7:30. Curran and Pat and I had breakfast at the one open bakery while Dad and Mom had breakfast at the hotel. We ordered a King Cake and Curran found the charm (a little plastic angel), and though he declined to wear the greasy paper crown that came with the cake I declared him the Roi de Noel. We spent the morning touring the castle at Carcassonne. Curran and I caught an English-language ramparts tour, and though it was a bit wordy it gave us access to a more ramparts and some great views of the castle and city. Around three we went to the train station to catch the train to Paris, where we would stay one more night before returning to Atlanta.
Thus began a rather difficult 24 hours. The earliest train we could get deposited us in Paris pretty late, and when we went to meet a bus to the hotel we found that, contrary to what Rick Steves had told us, the last one had already left. (Rick Steves led us astray a few times this trip, causing great inconvencience. Usually I like him.) There was much panicked discussion and traipsing around metro stations. We decided to buy tickets for the sketchy RER train to the airports, but all the ticket windows were shut for the day and none of the machines would take our credit cards because they didn't have the new-fangled chips. We ended up buying tickets off a homeless guy over Patrick's objections. I think he ripped us off pretty badly but I couldn't be sure because I was so desperately tired and hungry. It was past one in the morning by the time we checked into the airport hotel, but Mom and Dad couldn't get information on our flight--computers were down or something. Curran fell asleep while I read Madame Bovary in bed, and at around two thirty Dad broke the bad news that we would have to get up at 5:30 to catch the plane. I settled down for a three-hour nap. My eyes were half-shut and red most of the next day--I looked like a stoner. The flight from Paris to Amsterdam was uneventful, but things got worse from there. We sat in the plane in Amsterdam for an hour or so. There was an announcement that a computer had failed and they would try another one. We waited. Finally the captain told us that we had to switch planes. There would be a two hour wait--we couldn't leave a small secured area. By this point my blood sugar was crashing and I thought I might vomit. Then they said that those who wanted to could leave the secured area and get food and come back through security--I jumped at the chance. When I came back I found that they had decided to go ahead and kick everyone out of the secured area and send them all through security again. People were pissed. This one guy was ranting about how you know when someone says it's a computer problem they're lying to you. Then he went into a long spiel about how McDonald's is his favorite restaurant and he goes to one in every country he visits and people who criticize them are pinkos and it's amazing how they have these factories in Russia where they put in cows and potatoes and burgers and fries come out... At long last they let us through security and onto a plane.
Now we're back in Ithaca, and sick. Also, we keep waking up at three in the morning. We took some Benadryls this morning and managed to sleep until about 8:30. We did an impressive amount of cleaning and errand-running until we both crashed. We slept through the rest of the afternoon--Curran is still asleep and I'm about to go join him. Oh, well, the nice thing about being mildly sick is having an excuse to relax. I'm looking forward to playing with my new Christmas stuff tomorrow.
We set off for Georgia on the 20th. Never one to break from tradition (or maybe I'm just a procrastinator...), I still had one last paper to finish, so I worked on it during the day while my parents were at work and Curran was reading Persuasion. On Saturday night we went to my cousin's house for Christmas dinner--unfortunately she was sick with stomach flu, so we all went home pretty early. When we got home I was dying to open presents (we took a Christmas Eve flight to Paris, so no opening presents on Christmas morning). It may be materialistic, but I still get really excited about presents, no less so than when I was a little girl, really. It was a tantalizing wait while my parents did various things--I should have been working on my paper, but I hung around close to the Christmas tree instead. Finally, everyone was ready. My parents liked their presents--an Andrea Bocelli cd for Mom, the new Mark Knopfler cd for my Dad. I got some lovely clothes and the opera Persee on DVD from my parents, and a book and cds (including the new Iron and Wine cd) from Curran. Curran's present was a new overcoat, something he's been needing for a while, and he looks so sharp in it it's like another gift for me.
My brother's new cat, Judy, came with him to my parents' house, so I was getting to know her all this time. She was quite scared of me at first--the first day she jumped off a stairwell to escape from me. By the second day I was beginning to win her over, and soon she was hanging out with me on the couch and letting me pet her. She's very cute--a bit more of a normal cat than the family cats, though I hate to say it. After a bit of initial shyness (and after all, the family cats are terrorizing the poor thing daily), she's very nice to everyone. She even likes other cats--she tried to make friends with our cats, and she and a neighbor cat seemed to be making friends from either side of the glass door in back of the house.
On Sunday we caught our flight, and we arrived in Paris on Christmas Eve. We had just enough energy to walk down the street for crepes before we all took an afternoon nap. We had some misfortune that evening. Curran had an allergic reaction after accidentally eating some walnuts, and my mom came down with my cousin's stomach flu. (She wasn't the only one who had caught it--my cousin's mother and brother did (the latter had to be hospitalized), as well as my other aunt and uncle and two of their three kids. My mom figured out that everyone who held my cousin's baby caught it. Dad, Patrick, and I ventured out in search of a restaurant that was open on Christmas Eve, and finally found one. Patrick made the waitress very happy by ordering steak and foie gras, but Dad and I kind of pissed her off--he had a cheese salad and I had vegetable crudites. It wasn't our fault--they just didn't have any vegetarian main courses. Dad even ordered two glasses of wine, and I had tea and dessert (and tried to have white coffee, but she forgot my order). But still, Patrick got a friendly "bon appetit" whereas she put down Dad's and my plates without a word.
Mom's illness only lasted about 12 hours, so we were able to start going out the next afternoon. We went to Pere Lachaise Cemetery to find Abelard and Heloise and Jim Morrison. We saw Notre Dame (Curran's first French cathedral) and heard an organ recital there; we had dinner at a nearby vegetarian restaurant, Le Grenier de Notre-Dame, and for once the waiter was perfectly happy with me. I had wine and vervain tea and was suffused with a warm, cathedral-y sense of well-being.
We took a day trip to Chartres, which I enjoyed immensely. (The only trouble was that it was pretty cold inside and out, even with coats and hats and gloves--it made me appreciate how nice it would have been to have fur-lined gowns in the Middle Ages.) I looked at the sculpture outside and the stained glass inside and nearly drove Curran crazy wanting to look at the windows pane by pane. Curran and Patrick and I walked through the aisles and around the choir screen and tried to decipher the life of the Virgin depicted there (me: "Ok, that one is Mary and some people, like...praying..."). It was all apocryphal legends so our Catholic education didn't help me or Pat. At last the lady selling tickets to the tower returned from her lunch break, and we went up. (By the way, I *love* that at 25 I still get a youth discount in France.) It was really well done--they let you go into several little rooms and balconies on the way up, and they have lots of windows so you can look at the church from multiple angles and elevations. I loved getting different views of the buttresses and catching sight of gargoyles. At the top there was a walkway all the way around the tower, but Patrick and I were only able to make part of it. It was a very narrow walkway, albeit railed, and a sheer drop. We met up with my parents and had vin chaud and grog type drinks at a nearby cafe, and then walked around the back of the cathedral through the park. It was an immensely satisfying day--I really can't get enough of cathedrals.
Then next day Patrick took a day trip to Reims and the rest of us saw the Sainte-Chapelle and the Louvre and walked down the Champs-Elysees. The Louvre had remains of the old Louvre castle, which was good fun, and it had Abbot Suger's porphyry eagle vase. I wasn't expecting it, and when Curran and I came on it I audibly gasped.
On Friday we took a train to Carcassonne. We took naps almost immediately on arriving there. Curran and I slipped out for an evening stroll and his first look at the castle and walls, and then he and Patrick and I ventured out for a late dinner with cidre brut. The next morning we were the first ones up, and we had breakfast at the hotel pretty much as soon as it was open. They were playing some really lovely music--I inquired about it at the desk and was told that it was a group called Oc. Mom and I went to a bookstore to find road maps for the day's activity, a day trip to Albi to see the cathedral, and I was able to buy a copy of the Oc cd there. We headed out to Albi and arrived at the cathedral around 2ish. It was fortress style with high solid walls and windows at the very top, a striking contrast to Chartres and especially the Sainte-Chapelle. There was a fabulous late-medieval mural of the pains of hell. On the way back we drove through the gorges (I didn't even know they had gorges in Languedoc), stopped to explore a ruined church (fenced in, sadly--Curran was going to climb over but then some hunters arrived), and finally saw the Chateaux de Lastours, four ruined castles on a single rocky outcropping.
The next morning Curran and I woke up at 5:30, our sleep schedules having gotten off track when we woke up at 4:30 to catch the train on Friday. We couldn't get back to sleep, so we took a pre-dawn romp on the city walls and then walked through the streets. It was just us and the cats most of the time, although a few people were just beginning to get up by 7:30. Curran and Pat and I had breakfast at the one open bakery while Dad and Mom had breakfast at the hotel. We ordered a King Cake and Curran found the charm (a little plastic angel), and though he declined to wear the greasy paper crown that came with the cake I declared him the Roi de Noel. We spent the morning touring the castle at Carcassonne. Curran and I caught an English-language ramparts tour, and though it was a bit wordy it gave us access to a more ramparts and some great views of the castle and city. Around three we went to the train station to catch the train to Paris, where we would stay one more night before returning to Atlanta.
Thus began a rather difficult 24 hours. The earliest train we could get deposited us in Paris pretty late, and when we went to meet a bus to the hotel we found that, contrary to what Rick Steves had told us, the last one had already left. (Rick Steves led us astray a few times this trip, causing great inconvencience. Usually I like him.) There was much panicked discussion and traipsing around metro stations. We decided to buy tickets for the sketchy RER train to the airports, but all the ticket windows were shut for the day and none of the machines would take our credit cards because they didn't have the new-fangled chips. We ended up buying tickets off a homeless guy over Patrick's objections. I think he ripped us off pretty badly but I couldn't be sure because I was so desperately tired and hungry. It was past one in the morning by the time we checked into the airport hotel, but Mom and Dad couldn't get information on our flight--computers were down or something. Curran fell asleep while I read Madame Bovary in bed, and at around two thirty Dad broke the bad news that we would have to get up at 5:30 to catch the plane. I settled down for a three-hour nap. My eyes were half-shut and red most of the next day--I looked like a stoner. The flight from Paris to Amsterdam was uneventful, but things got worse from there. We sat in the plane in Amsterdam for an hour or so. There was an announcement that a computer had failed and they would try another one. We waited. Finally the captain told us that we had to switch planes. There would be a two hour wait--we couldn't leave a small secured area. By this point my blood sugar was crashing and I thought I might vomit. Then they said that those who wanted to could leave the secured area and get food and come back through security--I jumped at the chance. When I came back I found that they had decided to go ahead and kick everyone out of the secured area and send them all through security again. People were pissed. This one guy was ranting about how you know when someone says it's a computer problem they're lying to you. Then he went into a long spiel about how McDonald's is his favorite restaurant and he goes to one in every country he visits and people who criticize them are pinkos and it's amazing how they have these factories in Russia where they put in cows and potatoes and burgers and fries come out... At long last they let us through security and onto a plane.
Now we're back in Ithaca, and sick. Also, we keep waking up at three in the morning. We took some Benadryls this morning and managed to sleep until about 8:30. We did an impressive amount of cleaning and errand-running until we both crashed. We slept through the rest of the afternoon--Curran is still asleep and I'm about to go join him. Oh, well, the nice thing about being mildly sick is having an excuse to relax. I'm looking forward to playing with my new Christmas stuff tomorrow.