J'adore Paris!

I’m going to sprinkle in a little bit of my Paris visit here. For context, this happened after Geneva, but before I went to the L’Orangerie.

It turns out that Tia had a connection in Paris.

Her friend Evan from Aikido was staying at a friend’s apartment for the summer while the regular

occupants were bicycling to Istanbul.

(Crazy right?) So again for the fourth night in a row, all six of us got out many blankets and pillows and set up a sleepover in the livingroom of a tiny European apartment. By this point the men even had coordinating pajamas! (Full disclosure… this picture was actually taken in Geneva, but I’ve been looking for a place to work it in.)

I

nterestingly enough we had another midnight stirring as we did in Geneva. At some point close to 3:00AM, my pillow nudged a pile of electrical cords and magically turned on a lamp in the living room, and promptly woke everyone up. I could not for the life of me figure out how to turn the damn

thing off, and the electrical socket was behind an extremely heavy desk, so I couldn’t even unplug it. One by one, everyone got up to try to help me. Edith mused that she had solved the age-old riddle, it only took one physicist to turn on the light bulb, but it took five to turn it off. Eventually the riddle was solved, there was a dimming device that we had all earlier dismissed as a power supply.
The next morning Evan made up some spectacular pancakes, and we started up our regular shower queue. Edith always woke up first, and after she was done she made Jorge go in, then it was my turn, then either Jimmy or Tia (whichever order Tia was in the mood for) and finally John dragged himself off the floor and shuffled into the shower. John

loved the shower queue. It always guaranteed him an extra hour of sleep… or half sleep, considering everyone was stepping over him at all the time.

Finally, (pretty close to noon now) we were out of the house and on our way to the Eiffel Tower. (By the way, John and I had been lucky enough to view it ‘doing it’s thing’ the night before when we were awaiting everyone’s arrival. Please excuse the fact that this video is on it's side. I can't figure out how to rotate it on this &@$!ing european computer.)

It was even more impressive up close.
I was a fountain of information about Monsieur Eiffel (recall my New York visit when I learned that Eiffel had designed the interior structure of the Statue of Liberty) but everyone seemed to know already or not care very much.Meat, cheese, and several baguettes later, we were off to Montmartre to see ‘Sacré- Coeur’ (Sacred Heart). This is home to the most famous steps in Paris, and also happens to be one of Evan’s favorite places. There was a really great dance troupe there that was performing all of Michael Jackson’s hits one by one. ‘Thriller’ has become the theme of our trip because the Europeans have been playing it constantly since the King of Pop’s unfortunate death

earlier this summer. We enjoyed the moon-walking.

For our first dinner of the evening, we had pizza and a rosé wine. (Which I’m told dear Californians and fellow wine lovers, is very ‘a la mode’ in Paris right now, so if you want to be ‘trés chic,’ order a rosé at your next dinner outing.)Later that evening we planned to meet up with my friend Sinclair. Sinclair is living in Paris for the summer studying French cuisine. I like to think his life in class everyday is like an episode of ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’ but he assures me it’s not. He asked us to meet him for second dinner in a lovely little village in the south west part of Paris… but when we got there, the gates to the village were CLOSED?! How can you close an entire village? It turns out there was a fire right in the middle of the dinner hour and about ten restaurants had to close. Tempers among restauranteers were high because a lost night during peak tourism season… well that’s a lot of Euros lost. Hungry, thirsty, and some of us in need of a free bathroom, we ended up eating in a British style pub. Sinclair found this humorous, but I believe he thoroughly enjoyed his burger.

After dinner, Evan suggested that we get a few bottles of wine and ‘picnic’ on the Seine. After a somewhat comical quest for wine, (all the stores save one were closed) a wine opener, (Sinclair skillfully opened the bottle at the register despite all the pushing and rowdiness akin with a

Saturday night in a tiny liquor store) and of course plastic cups, (we aren’t heathens!) we made our way down to the riverside.
Stomachs full, thirst quenched, and all the museums closed for the day, we lounged, laughed, and enjoyed the view with locals and tourists alike. These were my favorite moments in Paris.

More Paris to come... but for now, back to Prague!

Ill over Prague

I’m pretty sure we got swindled, but I don’t care. When John and I arrived in Prague, we didn’t have a place to stay. We called up a few hostels in “Rick Steves's Best of Europe” (which has become our bible of sorts) and most beds were booked. We could have booked two beds in a room of 11 other people for roughly 400 Czech crowns a piece (16 Euros or $24) but we were staying in Prague for three nights and didn’t want to fight for showers or worry about our luggage all day, so we wanted a smaller room, maybe a quad at most. Because John and I are such seasoned travelers, we didn’t even consider the possibility that we wouldn't be able to find a room. So we decided to hand ourselves over to the mercy of the tourist information booth in the train station.

This guy was a fast talker an immediately gave us lots of options. “OK there’s this hotel you could stay at for 50 Euros a night, it’s sort of out side the city but you can take the tram in and it would be no problem, also there’s this other place, a little less nice a little further out, but it’s only 45 Euros a night…” He had a computer in front of him which only he could see on which he was furiously typing and clicking. He kept directing us to a monitor he had attached to the front of the desk obviously for us to view. The whole time he was talking he was supposedly showing us images of the hotels and the rooms we could stay in, but it was all very confusing because you didn’t know where to look when he was talking to you, and he was talking so fast that it was unclear which place he was showing you when. John and I looked at each other and I said, “OK, we have some options, we are going to go think about them, eat some lunch and come back.”

After we left the office John turned to me and said, “Did he just say we could stay on a boat?!” Indeed he had. The boat offer was pretty tempting… I mean seriously, sleeping on a boat in Prague? It would make a great blog entry. In the end though, the boat option was simply too far from the city center to consider. When we came back we told him that we wanted to stay in the center of the city, close to the sights, and also we wanted to maybe be in some sort of community house so we could meet other travelers. At this point he thought a second and said, “Well I don’t have anything like that, but I could rent you an apartment in the city center for 55 Euro a night. It sleeps six, but it’s OK that you are only two.” John and I did some quick math… the only hostel that seemed like an option at this point was a six bed dorm for 24 Euro a piece a night (or 48 Euro total), and we still would have to fight over showers and hide our valuables during the day and night (this was also $5 more than the boat by the way). This man was offering us an entire apartment with our own bathroom, plus kitchen, plus John and I would actually have our own rooms, for a mere 7 euros (or $10… or $5 each) more a night. Not to mention the fact that it was centrally located, and that the apartment actually looked NICE from the pictures he showed us. We decided to live luxuriously. It’s only too bad we didn’t have more people to share it with. (Jimmy and Jorge, I am looking in your general direction!)

In the end, swindled or not, it turned out to be a really good thing that we got this apartment when we did because when I woke up this morning with the sun streaming in my floor to ceiling windows, I realized something… I was sick. The day before when I felt a little run down I figured, “No problem, I’ll just take it easy tonight.” I took it easy alright, I slept for an entire 12 unwaking hours. This isn’t the kind of sickness that that you get over in a day, it’s the slow kind of sickness that eats your soul. It’s awful. So what does one do when they are sick in the middle of a three week sight-seeing blitz? Every second counts! Now this doesn’t mean sitting at a café drinking coffee or some other hot life restoring beverage doesn’t count, in fact… quite the opposite. However, at the moment all I can muster is going fwump on the couch and dragging a pen across a page. Thank goodness we have this ridiculous apartment. Anyway, back to the question, what does one do when sick on vacation? Sudafed me up! I am going to Prague Castle!

Frankfurt, Forget Me Not

Frankfurt, it's really sad we only had a few hours together. John and I came to you by chance, because the train through Berlin was full. You are such a relaxing little city, exactly what we needed. You even provided me with a little reminder of home.

I was so exhausted when we arrived, and for the first time since our trip started, I was a little bit sad. It's a lot of work to be a tourist everyday. We easily found a place to stay, but before we could do any sight seeing, we had one important task; Laundry. John and I gathered our things and tackled our verz first German task.... figuring out the washing machine. Thankfully, most of the directions for opperating the machine were in English. However, when we got to the part that said "choose the temperature!, there was a lot more to do than a simple C° conversion. There were four major czcles to choose from and each had three or four options as well. Here is what it said:

Koch-/Bunt- Waesche (numbers 30 - 95 C)

Pflegeleicht ( 30 - 60 C)

Wolle (kalt, 30 - 40)

Feinwaesche (kalt, 30 - 40)

Have I mentioned that I know absolutelz no German? What, no "Uber"?? John and I definately had an uber load. And wolle, does that mean wool? Does anzone wear wool anzmore?? We ended up picking Koch-Bunt-Waesche, which I just looked up does that actuallz mean cook or boil!? Oh well, when we came back our clothes seemed clean, but we had no further clues on how to opperate the thing. So we chose at random, and three cycles and three euros later, our clothes were actually dry.

After we finished the laundry we went out for drinks and dinner, and then walked around the town for a while. It was interesting to me much the banks of the Fankfurt Main, reminded me of the Seine. They are about the same width, and both have parks and walkwazs along them, but the banks of Frankfurt were sleepy. There were a few a bunch of runners, and a few picnickers here and there, but it felt very homey, and welcoming. It wasn§t the thriving seen we experienced in Paris (which I will tell zou about later). Of course, we did arrive on a Tuesday. I wish I had more time in Fankfurt, it was reasonably cheap, verz accomodating, pretty, and quaint. I would like to go back when I have more time. We skipped the bar scene in order to get a full night sleep in before an early train. I think it in the end it was a good choice, because I felt rested for once, but I am sure that one of you is going to say, "You went to Frankfurt and skipped seeing blah?!" To which I will respond, "I did not know it existed... I will just have to go back." :)

Until then Frankfurt, until then.

L'Orangerie

My first post about Paris is going to be about something I saw on my last day there. Why? Because it's my blog and I make the rules. It'll be a short post about my favorite museum experience while I was there. Lean in close art lovers, L'Orangerie is a refreshing mostly overlooked compliment to a day at the Louvre. We all love the Louvre, Venus Dimilo, Winged Victory, Mona Lisa and rooms upon rooms of gorgeous sculptures, paintings, tapestries, carvings, jewlerey, and the list goes on. But standing in front of the Mona Lisa, 25 deep, you wonder if you'll ever have a chance to actually apreciate a piece of art instead of walking by it at warp speed while 75 people scowl at you for 'ruining their snapshot' of one of the greatest masterpieces in the world. Seriously people, about a billion people have captured her on film so far just do an image search on google, it's better than your zoom lens.

I too almost missed L'Orangerie. Fortunately, we had purchased completely magical Paris Museum Passes (BUY THESE IF YOU GO TO PARIS) which let us skip the ticket line, get in for free, (it would have been €7,50) and here specifically let you in even if the museum is at capacity while everyone else has to wait. We strutted on up past all those people in line, waved our passes and we were in.








The museum only has two floors, and the basement consists of roughly five rooms conected by a large hallway. For it's size it has the most lovely collection. All of the artists are impressionists (the best kind of artists in my opinion), they have Picassos, Rodains, Monets, and quite a few Reniors. It is the greatest known artists to unknown artist ratio ever! It is here I discovered that I have a new favorite artist, (sorry Mr. Van Gough) Chaim Soutine.








Wow. If anyone could paint a gorgeous and slightly melting countryside at the same time it was Soutine. He's not all happy swirling trees though. Here's a man who could paint a dead chicken like no other. Rabbit for dinner? Still strung up? Soutine painted that too. I hope the rabbit didn't have to sit for two long. Got some chicken you've ripped the guts out of? Soutine put it next to a pitcher and called it a lovely still life. The paintings are emotionally haunting and you can't help wondering what darkness covered this man during these times. Here's my favorite:













(The chicken is cool too, but lets face it I don't want it hanging in my bedroom.) Where was I? Oh yes, let's go upstairs now and see the rest of the museum. There are only two whole rooms, but they make it count.


These large oval rooms were created specifically for Monet's water lillies series. The presention was absolutely perfect. when you walk in, the light from translusnt skyslights perfectly mimics a shady pond on a cool day. Standing in the middle of th room with only a few other people at a time, you might actually start to feel as if you are floating just under the surface of a lilly covered lake.



I was so completely overwhlemed with emotion that I got John and myself in trouble three separate times, once for using the flash, once for sitting on the rail in front of the painting, and then more time when I switched the camera to no flash mode and it decided to flash anyway. We almost got kicked out. Me and John, museum rebels, who would have thought? Here's me about to get an anrgy whisper:



This might be my last post about Paris for a while. Paris was so crazy I couldn't keep up with the blogging. I'm going to move onto Frankfurt and then Prague. But, you can bet your life that I am not finished blogging about Paris, and there will be more to come after things settle a bit. See you in Frankfurt!

Kinumdrum

Well folks, I am at a loss. I'm not what to do about this blog. My problem is not lack of things to write about, (in fact I have one post all written out and ready to go) my problem is that I have about a billion, trillion pictures and no way to upload them. So I am faced with a dilemma, should I write posts without pictures? Or write them all up with specific pictures in mind and then post them after I return. Both have their positives and negatives. Let's make a short list shall we?

Posting now:
Con- Posting without pictures probably ensures you won't read my blog
Pro- If you don't read it, you'll miss all the horrible spelling mistakes I make without english spellcheck. (delemma? Lucky I caught that one.)
Con- If I post now and find photo upload capabilities tomorrow... I'll have wasted all my material and be a cranky American.

Waiting until I get home to post:
Pro- My blog is slightly more exciting!
Con- I am no longer a hard core travel blogger
Pro- I won't feel like a self absorbed bitch anymore because I won't depend on my international friends to let me use their internet to blog when other people have more important uses for the internet, like booking MY train reservations.

So far that's two 'pros' for waiting to post about my travels... so I'm going to hold out a little longer. I hope you can too.

I suppose I should leave you with a teaser.... for all you nerds, the particle accelerater at CERN will be featured in the next post. For all you non-nerds... how do you feel about animal pornography?

Jets and Bubbles

We all hate jet lag, and we all have our little ways of dealing with it. John for instance, just made sure he had a steady supply of alchohol in him which was either supposed to put him to sleep, or keep him up depending on what he wanted it to do for him. (Has anyone else noticed this magical quality of alcohol?) We gave him a ber in the mall to keep him happy while Edith and I shopped. It seemed to work. I however, wanted to try a more natural approach to curing jet lag. (A little out of character, I know.)
The worst thing about jet-lag isn't being tired all day. As I walk around the city all day like a zombie, I still feel as though I am accomplishing something. I feel like the more I suffer now, the better the relaxing will be later. Perhaps this is a little masochistic, but I actually enjoy the suffering. My best example of this is cross country skiing.


Imagine skiing all day long, eating nothing but bits of chocolate and cheese (as per Wyoming tradition). At some point you feel so incredibly hungry that you are sure your stomach will eat itself if you don't get food in it soon, but you don't want to eat the energy bar you stored back at the car because dinner is a mere 30 minutes away and you know it will taste that much more delicious if you just endure the hunger a little while longer, and so somehow, the hunger feels good. So true, am I right? No? You would have eaten the energy bar? Well poo. My analogy is wasted on you.

Not being able to sleep well at night is the worst thing about jet-lag. All day you have endured the fatigue because you've been thinking about how good sleep is going to feel, but when you finally lay your head down on the pillow you realize that sleep is out of the question, for the first time all day you feel defeated. Then of course your friend Jimmy starts snoring, and when you turn to frown at him you catch your friend Tia reaching over and closing his mouth with her fingers, and you think this is the most hysterical thing you've seen all day and so you can't help letting a little giggle out which wakes up Jimmy, thus solving the snoring problem but instead causing some intense "steam roller" type retaliation. How old are we? Doesn't matter, we're on vacation.

Actually all things considered I am feeling pretty good. After two days in Geneva, I am on my way to Paris, (or at least I was when I wrote this the first time.) and surprisingly, I would rather write in my journal than sleep. Jorge and Edith have been wonderful hosts. Not only did they allow me Jimmy, Tia, and John to sleep in their tiny European studio apartment, (no kidding, we had to move all of the furniture out onto the veranda in order for us to all be able to sleep at the same time) but Edith spent her entire day off showing us around Geneva and then cooked us a lovely dinner.







Jorge wanted to show us three specific things in the city, and these are them:



















The first two are self explanatory, fire power, and strange animal pornography (sorry for the blatent teaser exageration) are of course important aspects of any city, but this???


No, it's not a fire drill, it's a giant pump that sprays lake water 140 meters into the air. A tourist trap. I would offer more of an explanation, like who designed it and for what purpose, but it really isn't all that interesting, and I refuse to spend priceless Europe time spewing facts and figures. You can learn more about it here if you want.

The rest of the city is really cute. I loved the old part of town with the little narrow streets lined with cafes and bistros, but I am told that I will be quite bored of this by the time I leave Europe.






Most of the day Thursday we spent at the particle accelerator on the French-Swiss border. (Can I get a high five from the rest of you nerds?!) It was pretty awesome, I mean if you like looking at grad students, their offices, and the cafeteria. Unfortunately all of the experiments were closed. We weren't even allowed to walk through the accelerator tunnel because it was a little chilly. (4K?! I experienced worse during most cross-country skiing adventures!) But seriously, the "retired famous physics equipment garden" was pretty cool. They had some old bubble chambers that greater physicists than I used to study electrically charged particles. They even have the famous bubble chamber Gargamelle. Gargamelle (the chamber, not the villan from the smurfs) was responsible for discovering Neutral Current, so it's kind of a big deal. You non-nerds might be able to appreciate the special place bubble chambers have in pop-culture. Remeber this 'Stokes' album cover? Yup, that's bubble chamber data. Can physics be cool now that it's art that's associated with indi-alternative-rock & roll? No? Oh well.

Next stop, Paris!

Sweet Geneva

JFK is a large international airport right? So it should have an extensive international terminal correct? Well, that's what I thought, but when John and I arrived a few hours early for our 7:30 PM flight to Geneva, I was immediately disappointed. I really don't usually care too much about airport terminals, but this being my first international flight (excusing my flight to Canada last summer), I wanted to arrive early, eat a good meal, drink a little wine, get on the plane and promptly pass out. After passing through security, (which by the way, took forever as usual) John and I looked for someplace to eat. Our options were panda express, and a somewhat sketchy looking take out pizza place. There were two bars as well, but no place served both wine and hot food. This ended up being my last meal in the states for three weeks:


But enough complaining! Nevermind that the Samuel Adams brewery had only one Sam Adams beer on tap (cherry wheat)! Nevermind that our glasses of wine cost $11 a piece! We arrived in Geneva safely, and "Yes, I would like a morning chocolate, thank you... pardon, Merci!"


After arriving, while waiting for our baggage, John and I discussed at length what we should tell the customs agent we were doing in Switzerland. John thought we should simply state that we were visiting the particle accelerator (CERN), and staying at the address he had in his pocket. Now I, (always the honest one) insisted that we divulge our entire travel plan, no matter how loose (Geneva, Paris, Prague... and then whatever else we have time for). I eventually won. This was probably because John hadn't slept a wink on the flight. We went up to the customs agent, he said "Hello," (knowing we were American) then stamped our passports and let us through. John turned to me and said, "Well, I think we handled the intense interrogation quite well." I had to agree.

Jorge and his wife Edith picked us up from the airport and vowed not to let us sleep the whole day in order to help us avoid jet-lag. Their first task, making us espresso. Delicious. They completely succeeded because 12 hours later it is 9:09 PM and we are wide awake and about to have some amazing dinner. I'll tell you more about our day in Geneva later, but right now I want to sit on the veranda and drink some wine with my friends.

I will however leave you with one image. What do you think our first meal in Switzerland was this morning? Remember, I'm staying with Jorge.























In his defense... this is exactly the meal I asked for.

Cassandra the Hot Sauce Mule

I love getting packages. I received all of these packages in the past week and just looking at them all makes me very, very happy. Unfortunately, even though they all have my name and address neatly printed on them, none actually contain anything "for me". Well I suppose they are "for me" in the sense that they are "for me" to bring to my friend Jorge and his wife in Genvea. Apparently it costs something ridiculous to ship anything of any size over to Europe these days, and so when Jorge wanted to buy an American backpack, he decided it would be in his best interest to get one of his friends to bring it back from the states for him. That friend, (after friend #1 said no) turned out to be me. Probably immediately after Jorge purchased this item, he realized: "Hey, if Cass is going to bring me over a backpack, it might as well be a FULL backpack." And so started his requests for relatives and neighbors to send me various things to pack for him, and I ended up with the pile of packages you see here.


As you can probably tell, the boxes weren't going to fit in the backpack the way they were, so I had to open them. (Also, I decided that it would probably be a good idea to know what exactly I was carrying between foreign countries.) Not surprisingly, aside from a few personal items, the packages contained largely foodstuffs the couple had a hard time getting in Europe. I suppose I shouldn't judge because I've never been away from the U.S. for any length of time before, so I have no idea what I would crave over there (and we all know how cranky I can be about any bagel that isn't up to par), but is this not the most American list of foods you've ever seen??

• Cheetos
• beef jerky
• shrimp flavored Ramen noodles
• hot sauce (Did you know they sold it in 32 oz bottles?)

Here is an abbreviated version of the email I sent Jorge:


Dear Jorge,
Do you guys really need 7 bottles of hot sauce? I'm not sure the 25 packages of ramen noodles will be enough to cushion them.
Let me know,
Cassandra
P.S. Also, please tell me if the throng of truckers you're hosting will interfere with my plan to sleep on your floor. Thanks!


His Response:


Cass,
There must have been a miscommunication with our suppliers. You can keep the 32oz bottle of hot sauce (that's too much for us!) just bring the other 6 bottles.
Thanks again,
Jorge



And if you think I'm kidding about the Ramen... have another look.



You might notice my newly inherited 32oz bottle of hot sauce buried in there. What can you do with 32 oz of hot sauce? Make chili for 320 people? Hot sauce eating contest? Please people, let me know!