Recap of Paris, Le Fin!

This is the last in my recaps of my trip to Paris. To pick up where I left off, on Saturday night my professor invited us to his abode and we had a local aperitif with pate and then made our way across the Seine to a wonderful restaurant right across from Notre Dame. He and his wife were very generous and wonderful to K. and me--he really has changed my scholarly life. I think K. and I are going to have him over for dinner when we all return to the States this fall.

But back to my recap! On Sunday, K. decided that we should go to Le Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (That National Museum of Natural History). It was one of the strangest experiences I've had this summer. We walked through the gardens, which were beautiful and very orderly -- much different than the planned chaos of the Chelsea Physic Garden. At the front of the museum, we were greeted by a dragon made from recycled cans and plastic (click on the photo to embiggen). It was really cool, not to mention an awesome use of the plastic bags (flames!) that fly about.

The real treat of the day, however, was the paleontology exhibit. We walked up the stairs into a turn of the century iron building (of which there are many throughout England and France). Once we looked in the door, I almost gasped: the room is filled to the brim with skeletons. There's really not a good descriptive phrase I can come up with to give you an idea of the shock I felt seeing so many angled-white bones, seemingly floating about. Along the walls of the room were more skeletons as well as many jars of various body parts, dead things, and Victorian oddities (like a one-eyed cat). Each of these had a carefully written sign that looked as if someone wrote it for the original exhibit and hadn't changed it since. It was a strange, and eye-opening experience -- I think I came away with a much better understanding of the Victorian obsession with science and death. There were three floors of specimens to go through. The above photo gives some idea of the first floor's interior (picture just as many skeletons on the other side of the first floor as well. To view some of the more gruesome pictures in the set, click on the 'photo' links to the right.

Recap of Paris, Part Six

Instead of boring you with more details of my Saturday afternoon in Paris, it can be summed up in two pictures. Sitting on the Seine while listening to street musicians, overlooking Notre Dame, and eating ice-cream from Berthillon. (Caramel for K. and grapefruit for me.)


We were stupid and went to the Jewish district on Saturday on the search for falafel. Don't ask me why I forgot it was Shabbat. It was so sad to walk along along the streets and see all the shops closed. Luckily, Chez Marianne was open and K. and I could pick up our falafel and big dill pickles from their takeout window and sit on a closed storefront to eat our lunch. Mmmmmm....

Recap of Paris, Part Cinq

Well, it seems that my years-long, Proustian recap has finally reached my second day in Paris! Don't worry, dear readers, you aren't missing much of my travails in London. I've been working, reading, and sleeping (in that order), with not much time for anything else except a movie here and there. This weekend I will have updates though -- I'm planning outings!

So Saturday morning K. and decided to continue our tourist-y streak and went to visit the zoo that is Notre Dame Cathedral. It was beautiful, especially the intricate carvings on the outside, but honestly, the tremendous lines, crowding, crowds, and flashes from cameras made my time there a little uninspiring. You know how I get: all riled up about something on principal and K. has to listen to me hold forth on my topic of choice while he tries to hush me since we're in a place of God?! It wasn't that bad, but it was close. There's really not much to say about Notre Dame other than it's a mammoth, beautiful church, with a really great sculpture of Saint Denis (he's the one the angels are staring at saying 'dude, where's your head?'). I am in a MOOD tonight, folks!

After we toured Notre Dame, we visited the Crypt Archeologique de Parvis de Notre Dame / The Archaeological Crypt of Notre Dame Square. It's only about 100 feet from the church, so it was easy to find once we knew we were looking for something that resembled a subway entrance (it is a crypt, after all). It's an unassuming little museum that ended up being the highlight of our day! It takes you underneath Notre Dame to the archaeological excavations that have uncovered ruins from the Roman period right on up to the 19th century. Most of the museum is constructed around the excavations themselves, so you really get a feel for how different parts of history are literally on top of each other. I really enjoyed this museum: it wasn't expensive, it was small enough to be manageable in a short time, and it was well-developed and thought-out.

Next up, K. and I search for the perfect ice-cream cone in Paris!

Recap of Paris, Part Quatre

Isn't learning the French cardinal numbers fun? I kid, I kid.

On Friday evening, I decided we should visit the Eiffel Tour, or as I insisted on calling it to bug K: La Tour Eiffel!!! I think we might have seen it from a long distance away as we were walking through Paris earlier in the day, but it looked so dinky and small that I was very disappointed, so much so that I really was expecting something really lame. We walked out of the Metro (the Paris version of the Tube) and didn't see the damned thing anywhere. We started walking in what we thought might be the correct direction, but other than the ubiquitous street cafes and statued squares, we didn't see anything of note. The all of a sudden we saw a few people with cameras leaning against the side of one of the white-stoned buildings. And then we saw it -- in a fit of lights that looked more Las Vegas than Paris, La Tour Eiffel! (See, doesn't it sound better that way?) The strobe and search lights served to be our Star of Wonder for the evening, and eventually we made it to the park that stretches for at least a quarter mile past the Eiffel Tower. There were many people there with picnics, vendors selling cheap wine from their backpacks, and people hawking cheap Eiffel Tower key-chains and the like.

I couldn't get over how beautiful the Eiffel Tower was at night. And how big! I must have seen it from very far away, because standing near it made all of Paris look tiny. The shot on the right was taken pretty far away and it *still* filled up most of the frame. It truly is a wonder of engineering and quite beautiful when the strobe lights die down and its normal night-time lights illuminate the dark sky. K. and I were both filled with a very childlike glee as we walked home that night--not just that we'd seen something as iconic as the Eiffel Tower, but in this age of bombastic sites, it still held up and was worth getting pestered by wine vendors every three seconds. Plus, I am now the proud owner of an Eiffel Tower key-chain that someone accidentally dropped. I'm Ricky the Raccoon: I can spot shiny things from 30 paces.
In honor of La Tour Eiffel, K. wants to get an Eames rocker with Eiffel Tower legs. Those are some nice gams on that chair!

Recap of Paris, Part Trois

After we finally said goodbye to the Museum of the Middle Ages, K. and I went back to Le Marais to explore the patisserie near our hotel. It was there I spied one of my culinary quests: MACARONS! I know, these look nothing like the macaroons I grew up with: dense, coconut cookies that (if they're made correctly) have a hint of moisture in the center. I love these cookies, especially when half of the cookie is dipped in bitter chocolate.

I had seen pictures of French macarons before, and don't they look heavenly? The colors! And they're sandwich cookies -- one of (w0)man kind's greatest inventions, I think. I pointed at a green one and told K. that instead of a pastry, I was getting a macaron.

I was not disappointed. I bought a 'macaron pistache' and ran up the three flights to our room to taste it. There were 4 distinct parts to the cookie: the sandwich portion was made from a very light dough on the inside, and the dough had cooked smooth on the outside. When you bit into it, little fault-lines appeared on the top of the cookie. The filling was made from a thin layer of creme as well as a layer of chopped pistachios. Even though it had so many layers, the cookie was still light to touch and not overly sweet on the tongue. All the textures were perfect together, and the pistachio was a perfect, nutty complement to the sweetness of the creme filling.

Everybody's favorite domestic goddess, Nigella Lawson has a recipe for Pistachio Macarons! Leslie! Jasmine! Kevin! I'm calling you out!

Realization of the Day:

Nettles hurt.

Ouch! I received my first nettle sting today. Nettles are everywhere here (really, whole fields of the little suckers) and the little plants look like mint. I bent down to pick some and received a most unwelcome surprise. My thumb still hurts!

Today I went on an eight mile hike in the county of Hampshire, in the south of England with the other intern that shares my position at the WBL. This year the powers that be picked two interns instead of just one, so I now have a partner in crime (and a very nice one at that)! She happens to have gone to college with Greg, one of my dearest friends. Since I met him when I went on a trip during high school, I've never talked to anyone else who knows him--it was so nice to be able to talk to another person who knew Greg!

We took a train from London to a village called Mortimer and walked to the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum, which is now the town of Silchester. There's an amazing ruined amphitheatre outside of town, and the city walls are still intact, so one can walk along their (now grassy) top. We had a snack at the base of a giant oak tree, walked along many pastures and streams, and even stumbled onto a pheasant and game-bird farm when we took a detour away from our planned route (read: we got lost).

We spent part of our afternoon going through St. Mary's Chuch in Silchester. It has some wonderful remnants of medieval wall-paintings of flowers (photo to your left), possibly painted as early as the 13th century. It was a nice, quiet parish church, with a 400 old yew tree that shaded many of the old tombstones. It was great seeing the church with an art historian, especially since I've always been interested in the history of medieval churches in England. This church also had a wonderful wooden ceiling, but none of the guides mentioned if it was a Tudor one or not (it looked as if it might be).

One of my favorite parts of England are the little villages filled with wonderful remnants of the medieval and Roman periods one just runs into! We ended our day with a much more modern stop at the pub at the next village over, called Bramley Then, we caught the train back to London! After all was said and done, we walked about 8 miles.

Recap of Paris, Part Deux

After K. and I completed our tour with my history professor (who, incidentally, is one of the main people who helped me get my internship at WBL), toured the French version of the British Library, and met up with his wife for lunch in a little Italian pizza joint, K. and headed off on our own to explore.

The first stop among many was to the Le musée national du Moyen Âge (the National Museum of the Middle Ages, also called Musée de Cluny). It's one of the most amazing museums I've ever seen. Room after room of medieval artifacts, from pillars to rings, painted statues to stained glass, it was like putting all the medieval things I've wanted to see in one place. I could have spent days there. I'm very lucky that my husband also likes history, because we ended up spending most of the afternoon wandering through room after room of wonders.

Perhaps the most famous objects in the museum are the 'Lady and the Unicorn' tapestries, one of which is pictured above. I didn't realize just how huge they would be. The image to the left shows the scale of the tapestries when they are put altogether. When you can see them along the wall, you can see the story progressing from one theme to another. It was quite breathtaking to see the tiny details in each tapestry and how well the tapestry has held up after 500+ years. Even the background is decorated with a floral pattern and little animals, so one could stare for hours at them and always see something new.

My favorite part of the museum was being able to witness something about the medieval period that doesn't really survive in England: painted statues. Medieval churches were gaudy affairs. The tile was painted, the pillars were painted, and all the statuary were painted as well. In England, it's a rare find to see remnants of medieval painting, but the Musee had some amazing examples. This one from the 15th century is nice, but my favorite were the earlier ones from around the 12th century. K. was incredibly impressed with all the medieval stained and painted glass, which is something else one can't see in England very easily.

Realization of the Day (A Recap of Paris):

I haven't really talked about Paris yet, have I?

This wee hask been a blur. K. left on Tuesday and I went back to work at a frantic pace. I realized that I was left with a messy room, no food, and no clean laundry, so I've spent the last week regrouping from my mini-holiday. Honestly, I've been a little sad to be without K. as well; even though my room was teeny-tiny, it was nice to have him here and be our usual quirky selves together.

But I said I was going to talk about Paris, didn't I? Our first day in Paris was last Friday. It was spent with my paleography professor guiding K. and I around Le Marais and the surrounding area. He's a retired history professor, so a guided tour from him was better than any travel book or guide I've ever had. One of the first things he showed us was what remained of Phillip Augustus' wall that surrounded the medieval version Paris in 121o.

Paris has expanded since then, but since building material was hard to come by, the wall has become any number of things, including the side wall for a building. On your left is a picture of a typical 17th century Parisian building; however, the corner to this building is actually built onto the remains of one of the round towers that were at all the entry gates to the city. My history professor was very worried that the portion of the wall at ground level was going to get destroyed by the kids playing football/soccer against it on the weekends. His wife thought it had withstood so much that there wouldn't be a problem.

I love cities that have been around for a long time, whether they are from Europe or the East coast. K. and I stayed at a cheesy but cheap little hotel called Hotel de 7eme Art, which had an old Hollywood theme. (Our room had a Asphalt Jungle post over our bed.) Our room also had exposed beams of really old wood, complete with old plaster and sloping ceiling. Even though there was a modern bathroom, it was obvious that our hotel was also built during the same time that the building above was!

À bientôt!

I return to you a well-travelled girl! K. and I are just back from our weekend in Paris, and it was amazing. Paris has always been one of those cities you grow up with -- seeing pictures of people sipping coffee at street-side cafes, kissing at the Eiffel Tower, vendors along the banks of the Seine. It's always been so much in my mind, that I wasn't very excited about going there. "It's like New York," I said (and I've never been there either). "You don't have to go there to know what it's like."

I take it all back. Paris is full of street-side cafes and vendors along the Seine, but it's nothing like I imagined it at all. Having never been to the continent before, I don't know if I had the vocabulary before now to even describe Paris correctly. It's so different than London. A lot of London is made of dark-bricked Victorians--add the dark sky and deep-green trees and London can be a dark, dreary place. I'm sure Paris can as well, but most of the 17th century buildings are made of a cream-colored stone that gives the eye a flash of light against the dark cobblestones.

It was lovely, all told. During the next few days I'll be picking out a few moments from the trip to highlight on this blog. K. left this morning, so I'm feeling a little down-and-out (you know, listening to Nina Simone and drinking milky tea). Once my mood bounces back, I'm sure I'll resume my daily posting!

Garden of Evening

In the past few years, K. and I have developed a love for plants and gardening. But you all know that K. and I can't do something normally, like have a few pots of herbs on our apartment patio. Oh no, that would be far too easy. In the past two years, my husband has transformed some fallow flower beds into a thriving city garden that boasts of artichokes, peppers, rhubarb, a dozen tomato plants, beans, 2 types of strawberries, and most recently, a medieval herb garden. (Oh, stop laughing...you all love our silly ways!!)

It was with great pleasure that I took K. to the Chelsea Physic Garden this afternoon. It's in the middle of Chelsea, one of the more posh areas of London. It's been open since the 17th century, when it was a training ground for apothecaries. Within its walls lies a richness of herbs (medicinal and edible), vegetables, fruit trees, succulents, cacti, pond plants, carnivorous plants, plants representative of every continent, and many more herbaceous wonders.

It's open late on Wednesday evenings, so K. and I took the tube, ignored the rain, and stepped into its well-marked rows of plants with glee. We spent an hour and a half wandering around in the spitting rain gawking at plants that we had in our garden and some of which we were totally unfamiliar. It was so fun! Pictures of our adventure are housed in the usual spot (swing your eyeballs to the right, please). Pictures include the prettiest chard on the planet, artichokes, pitcher plants, monkey puzzle, and many more plants. Why, they even showed the wonders of California's plant life!

K. and I are off to Paris tomorrow, so I won't be posting until Monday, when I'm sure I'll have lots to report!

The Girl with One Pancake

There's a cardinal rule when you're living abroad. Don't try and find those things for which you're homesick; you know, fresh-squeezed lemonade, your favorite shampoo, a brand of coffee you've been using for years. Just relish the thought that soon you will be back at home with life's familiar goings-on. Basically, to put another spin on it, travelling is a time to try out new things!

But I was craving pancakes. Honestly, I think pancakes may be my favorite food. Ever since my Grandma Opal made them for me when I would spend the weekends at my grandparent's farm, I've adored pancakes. Grandma made them perfectly. I think she probably greased the pan with just a light layer of butter and then left the pancake on the griddle (no peeking!) for just long enough until it was a rich shade of sienna before she flipped it over. I remember sitting in the yellow vinyl chairs turning myself towards the kitchen so I could see her standing over the stove. Grandpa and I would smile in anticipation. Then comes the butter. You have to make sure that the little pad of butter is evenly divided over the top pancake, but that there's enough left to hide under the top one and cover the one underneath. Then comes the syrup. As many of you know, I will go through liters of this stuff given the chance. No really. I make sure that syrup has hit every centimeter of the pancake and then keep pouring until the edges of the plate almost drip with the stuff. Now K. and I make banana pancakes on the weekends, and sometimes we'll even have them for dinner along with a few eggs.

Ahem. So obviously, pancakes are very important to me. Honestly, I don't miss that much because I like trying new things, but I have been craving pancakes for a few weeks. When I saw that the Jacobite Cafe's special was 'American style' pancakes, I dragged Kevin into the cafe for my lunch. I should have known there'd be a problem when the waitress sheepishly came up to us after 10 minutes and told me that they couldn't find any self-rising flour for the batter. "Just put in some baking powder," clever K. replies, and off our happy waitress goes to finish making my flap jacks. About 15 minutes later she comes back with two plates in her hand: K's panini and my.....

pancake. After all that trouble, I received a single pancake, about 4 inches in diameter. Even though I found the experience sadly funny, I was ready to dig in until I smelled the telltale 'burnt pancake' smell that I know so well. I flipped my pancake over and was greeted to a smoking, black door-way into my own personal hell. I had one pancake, and it was burnt! I slathered it in butter and syrup, tasted it, and the consistency almost threw me. It was cakey, spongey, and not at all the consistency of anything I wanted to eat. Boo.

I made the same mistake the next day when I again ordered pancakes. This time, there were three smallish pancakes on my plate--nicely cooked, but still having a strange consistency. No more pancakes for me, my friends. But you can all bet that my first morning back in Los Angeles, that K. will be firing up the griddle!

Radio Free Europe

Apologies for the radio silence! It's been a whirl-wind week of working, spending evenings with K., and a weekend in Aberystwyth, Wales (complete with a 6 hour train ride each way)! Let me sum up...

K. arrived safely last Wednesday, and after a short nap I showed him Hampstead Heath and the wonderful crepe stand that I mentioned in an earlier post. K. went to sleep early and didn't wake up when I went to work on Thursday morning. In fact, when I got home from work to catch our train to Wales, K. was still in bed!

After throwing together our clothes, our picnic, and a bleary-eyed boy, we made it to our train and began the long trip through the midlands and through Wales. We finally arrived in Aberystwyth after 10pm, found our bed and breakfast, and crashed for the night.

Our bed and breakfast, Yr Hafod, was wonderful. It was on the beach (really, just across a small street) and next door to Aberystwyth Castle! The breakfast was amazing as well...croissants, fruit, cereal, yogurt and a hot breakfast if you wanted one (we didn't). It was so nice to stay overnight in a nice, friendly place! Should any of you travel to Aber, I highly recommend our B and B!

When we went outside and saw our location in the light of day, we were shocked that the castle was so close! The ruins are quite extensive, and Aberystwyth has done a great job of creating a space that is at once amazing and friendly to families, locals, and tourists. The entire area is covered by grass, so people were picnicking all around the castle, some on blankets and others on picnic tables. Gravel paths cross through the ruins to make it easier for people to walk from one part of town to the other. Right next to the ruins of an old church building there is a playground. It was one of the best blends of medieval and contemporary spaces I've seen! My photos don't do the castle justice, but the BBC has a 360 degree panorama of the castle that gives the scope a little better than K. and I could.

I've uploaded new pictures to my Flickr account, which (as always) can be accessed by clicking on the photo titles to the right. Since K. had the camera for a lot of this weekend, there are many more photos than my usual 4 or 5. Enjoy!