Life: Idiotropic

This morning we enjoyed a nice breakfast in the hotel via room service. It was, of course, the traditional French breakfast. A baguette, a croissant, and a chocolate filled croissant, jam and butter, a clementine, and an apple sauce, plus all the beverages we'd ordered - coffee, juices, and hot cocoa. It was nice that first morning to wake up not having to worry about where to find breakfast and it helped us get going at a reasonable hour (not a small feat with four daughters all of whom care about what they are wearing - yes, even Elise).

We took the Metro from St. Augustin to Franklin D. Roosevelt and then switched lines from the "mushy peas" to the yellow line and stopped at Concorde. Switching lines wasn't horribly easy. You really need to know more than just the color of the line as the colors aren't used except on the maps themselves, so it helps to know the ends of each line as that is what you'll see on the signs. It took us a loop or two to find the yellow. The tunnels weave in and out of each other quite a bit and they get crowded. A man played the clarinet to some classical music on the side of one tunnel. Large posters framed by colored tiles lined the sides of the tunnel.

Coming up from the Metro out to the Concorde was nice. It was cold and grey, but the pond and Ferris wheel were right there. Luci didn't want to go on the Ferris wheel, so I took Tiara and Arianna on it while Kirk stayed with the little two. There was no line at all, so as soon as it stopped, we were first to hop on. Then we sat at the top while they loaded more people. I tried to take pictures, but every little move made our basket turn and rock - something that made Tiara and myself very nervous. The Ferris wheel is big and a little taller than I am comfortable with and seeing Kirk and my other girls in ant form at the bottom made the height pretty obvious. Being in the middle of things, it is a great vantage point to get the view of the city and a better sense of the layout. It was the first time I'd seen the Seine river and the Eiffel tower in the day.




Photos: 1) The Egyptian Obelisk, a gift from the Egyptian viceroy to King Phillip, in the foreground with the Ard De Triomphe in the back center 2) The Eiffel Tower and the Seine River 3) The Grand Palace 4) The pond in front of the Ferris Wheel in the foreground, then the Tuileries and Jardin des Tuileries (I'm sure much prettier with foliage in the summer), and the Louvre is the big mass of grey in the background
Scattered around prominent tourist spots in Paris including the Ferris Wheel at the Concorde were little carnival style rides for small children that were absolutely free for the holidays. It was nice. Those little things just make it that much more friendly and so far, the Parisians have been very friendly. So, the kids and Kirk enjoyed a carousel ride once we got off the Ferris Wheel. It was right there and something that the little ones could enjoy.


Conveniently next to the carousel and quite unavoidable was the waffle/crepe stand. They also sold bratwurst style long sausages in baguettes, but the "healthy" food was overshadowed by the crepes and waffles. My little ones have been in Brussels enough to know exactly how absolutely necessary it is to eat a good waffle when one presents itself. Truly, there is no refusing that sticky glob of dough if you're under the age of 10. Even Kirk and Tiara wanted one on this day, so I ordered 5 waffles with really obnoxiously messy powdered sugar that soon coated coats and gloves (for Kirk and the kids), and one delicious crepe (for me, of course).






Feeling relatively well nourished from our sugary dough and wanting to have a decent amount of time in the Louvre, we began the walk through the Jardin des Tuileries (fancy talk for a big green space with a lot of leafless trees) towards the Louvre. I didn't know until approaching it that it was housed in the old Royal Palace. The leafless gardens ended, old white statues with birds on every head circled the pond at the Louvre end of the garden, and then we saw this amazing building that seemed to go on forever. It was huge. The entire building is not used for the museum, but a good portion is and the building itself is quite a museum piece. Walking up the steps towards the entrance we passed countless men selling art - the same cheap reproductions that we saw everywhere in Paris - but these were 10Euros each - a very high price for what it was. One vendor also sold sweaters and very cute little hats - something that tempted me just a little on the cold December day.

Although Elise was carried quite a bit on the trip as a whole, she was spunky and full of energy on this day walking the entire length of the gardens - all the way from the waffle stand to the Louvre without being carried once. Luci, however, never the conformist, rode in the stroller.

Beyond the fountains and the statues is a beautiful gate just sitting all alone marking the way to the Louvre beyond it. The entrance of the Louvre is in a large glass modernistic pyramid that rises from the pavement in the middle of the palace square in stark contrast to the old stone building facade and it's heavy ornately carved gate. It's surrounded by large pools of water with fountains. Upon entering the pyramid, we had our bags scanned as if in an airport, then took the escalator down into the large open area that truly did feel more like a busy metropolitan airport than a museum. It was large, open, and scurrying with people going in all directions. Big signs over the doors led way to various portions of the museum as if heading off to the C concourse to catch a flight. Inside they had various gift shops, a Starbucks, a restaurant, a lot of little food stands, information booths and many ticket sellers. We had to go down one wing to buy our Museum passes - a great deal as they were good for admission into most of Paris' museums and monuments.

Not knowing exactly where to start, Kirk decided that if we saw nothing else, we should see La Jaconde (the Mona Lisa), so we entered that wing and followed the signs to see her. Some rooms allowed photography and others not. Little poles with ropes connecting them (like the ones in the bank, but shorter) ran along most walls to keep people an arms length away from the precious paintings. A huge atrium of sculpture lay off to one side. Another room we caught sight of was closed to the public and was filled with beautiful sculpture still wrapped partly on wooden slats - may be new acquisitions or things moving on. The museum itself was beautiful. The inside vast and elegant with gorgeously carved columns and embellished ceilings.

The museum itself truly is something that should take days. It is impossible to see everything enough to really appreciate it all in a short period of time. Each room was different -- not only the art in it, but the room itself. It was apparent that quite a bit of thought went into the style of the room -- the color, architecture, and size -- and the art that would fit best into it.

The Mona Lisa was on a wall all by herself in the middle of a large room. Ropes kept the crowds back and two guards stood by it where most rooms shared one guard with several other rooms. I saw the crowd before I saw the Mona Lisa and though it is not my favorite painting, I could see why she was special. It really is different in person - the colors that film cannot capture. I couldn't photograph her and the postcard does no justice, but she glowed. The colors brighter, more intense, and more lifelike seeing her in person.

Walking back we also saw the Venus de Milo - also sitting by itself in the middle of the room with a decent crowd around her.

Tiara studied Egypt this last term in school, so we went through the expansive Egyptian art section there, saw a lot of papyrus, stone carvings, sarcophagi, and a very well preserved mummy. It was in this area that Kirk and I saw by far the oldest "things" we'd ever seen. Truly, looking at the museum's collection is one thing. It is too easy (especially with the four girls) to walk by, think, "oh, that is pretty" or "interesting style," without really looking at the art itself, trying to read the description written only in French, or looking at the dates. It's then that the things jump out at you. And, with Kirk and his incredible grasp of history at my side, those moments when we did talk about a particular item, made those things so much more special - realizing their age, the civilization that created them, and what was going on at that time. Those details made the "ordinary" art become really quite extraordinary.

After all that we'd been at the museum for about 3 hours and everyone was getting antsy. We walked through some 17th C. French art - not the impressionists (my favorites), so it didn't excite me, and then saw two Vermeer paintings before we left. (Tiara really likes Vermeer's work, so if we're in a museum with Vermeer, we'll see those paintings.)


Photographs above: 1) a mummy 2) one of several long rows of sarcophagus' 3) One of 36 capitals of a column from the audience hall of the palace of Darius I (Elise is standing to the right to give it scale) 4) The front of an Egyptian stone 5) Arianna admiring a painting in the French wing

Photographs below: 1) Arianna in front of a case full of carvings 2) My three youngest enjoying the airvents that made their hair dance and filled their dresses. This was probably the highlight of their day as they found the airvents in each room, dancing on them and laying on them. 3) The three little girls resting on a bench in the last room that we visited before leaving the museum 4) Part of the Louvre taken from a window inside








Tempted, we walked through a beautiful gift shop full of beautiful overpriced souveniers, but we managed to come away with only some very carefully chosen postcards. A food cart nearby did afford us the opportunity to sit before leaving though so we enjoyed some nice baguette sandwiches and fanta. For someone with a few less children, it would be very comfortable to spend an entire day there with the nice eateries and ample places to sit and rest.

That was the last stop of our day. Everyone had sore feet from so much walking and standing and it was already getting dark. Below are photos of the St. Augustine church, our hotel, and the view from our room window that evening:



Getting back, everyone was tired except me and it was too early for dinner, so I went out for a little walk to buy some fruit and pastries for the next morning's breakfast. The little patisserie around the corner had some wonderful breads including the chocolate filled croissants the girls like and a raspberry cheesecake tarte that was heavenly. The fruit stand sold me fruit for 1 Euro a piece (when the grocery store was only a block away - I found that out later). The chocolate shop around the corner looked good, so I stopped in there and got a few little chocolates to try. One was Earl Grey - my favorite tea, so I was curious to see what it would be like in chocolate. Up the street was a wine shop. The windows were entirely covered on the inside with rows upon rows of wine, cases sat casually outside in the cold, and a large wooden barrel stood just by the door with the words "probst" on it - meaning "try." On the barrel were a couple wine glasses, a baguette and a wheel of brie, and a couple open bottles of wine. It looked delicious, but I didn't try any of it. Arianna had a hard time sleeping the night before, so before heading back to our room I also stopped into the pharmacy there. The two older men working there were very kind. One spoke fair English and helped talk to the man behind the counter who gave me something for her. I was amazed at how warm and friendly they were even with my complete lack of French language skills. There were no medications out where the public could reach them. In the shop were bath salts, cosmetics, and other little things for sale. To obtain any sort of medication you actually have to talk to the pharmacist behind the counter and trust that he's making the right decision - no shopping around and no brand choices. I asked if he had something for my daughter's congestion and cough, motioning to the nose and throat, and he gave me a little white box of pills saying to give Arianna 3 each day. It felt strange. The box had no directions that I could find. I only had to take the word of the man there. German pharmacies are the same.

When I got back we relaxed a little more and flipped through the channels on the t.v. stopping to watch the Circe Du Soliel. One act included a few emu. When Elise saw them, she got excited and said, "Look! Goose!"

At 7:30 we all went to the Petite Carte for dinner. Since our hotel is a military officer's hotel, the meals are not inflated in price like other local restaurants. They have both the Petite and Grand Cartes - the small and large (fancier) restaurants. We dressed nice and went to the Petite Carte which served ample food for us. They seated us in a nice dining room at a big table next to a little one where an older gentleman sat. Our waiter spoke a little English, so he was able to help us with our menu choices.

As with most traditional French restaurants, dinner is served in courses - not ala carte, so we chose our first, lighter course, then our dinner plate, and then afterwards were given the choice of dessert.

The first courses were hard to figure out, so I just ordered a bit of everything spread out over the family so we could try and learn what it all was. Tiara's appetizer was a nice ice-cream-scoop sized ball of very tasty guacamole that she ate with her bread. Kirk had a wonderful strained vegetable soup with a very intense flavor, but absolutely no chunks. The little girls had very nice salads that they ignored, and I had a plate with 4 thin deli-slices of some sort of pork sausage drizzled with a vinaigrette dressing. It was all very good.

For our dinner, Arianna and Luci both had a very good breaded chicken filet with french fries. Kirk and I both chose the salmon baked in foil with vegetables - another great choice. Tiara had ham that was served with the most yummy pureed broccoli. The broccoli had the taste of broccoli, but the consistancy of mashed potatoes. Tiara didn't care for it, but it was wonderful and Kirk devoured it. It's something that is worth replicating at home.

During this time Luci had been picky about her salad and picky about her fries, so the nice man next to us smiled at her and kept giving her little breaded and fried potatoe balls (croquettes?). She loved those and kept smiling back and him and very politely asking for more. That got a conversation going. During at least half of our meal, Kirk and the Colonel (we never learned his name) talked with each other in very slow French and English and drew pictures and wrote notes on paper to try to communicate. The Colonel was very friendly and we enjoyed our little communication with him.

Dessert was next. The three little ones had the most delicious ice cream I've ever tasted. Elise and Luci had true French Vanilla - a flavor different from anything I've ever had with the dark flecks of vanilla bean present. Arianna had the most wonderfully balanced, yet intense dark chocolate ice cream. Tiara and I kept begging for bites. It was all served in chocolate covered ice cream cone bowls. Tiara, Kirk, and I had the apple tart with a rhubarb sauce - very good, but nothing like the ice cream.

By the time dinner was over it was almost 10. Meals can last a long time in Paris.

Below is a great photo from the ferris wheel - click to enlarge it if you can. It shows the Eiffel tower and the Seine River, the Grand Palais, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Obelisk.

It doesn't matter how excited we might be, it still takes absolutely FOREVER to get out of the house on a non-school morning with the girls. The goal was to leave around 10. That should have given us ample time. Still, it was a bit after 10:30 and Stella (GPS) estimated a four-hour travel time from our house to the hotel. How I wish that would have been true!

The drive was beautiful, actually. Belgium is hilly and green and since we were going along a route I hadn't been before, so the villages were unique to me and very nice. One village was deep in a valley surrounded by high green hills. One hill, perfectly centered in the back of the valley, jutted out into the middle of the deep and displayed a beautiful old church sitting up high in the middle of the little houses in the village below. It looked like something out of a painting.

We stopped as we neared the border to get gas in the car and stop at a little convenience store to get some car snacks. It had American stuff - little cans of Pringles, sodas, and other junk food. But - it also had fresh baguettes, yummy turnovers and waffles, and good salamis and cheeses.

Traffic slowed as we crossed the border into France through the old pre-EU check-point, but sped up again afterwards as the buildings spanning over the autobahn were dark and abandoned. A very nice sign just inside the border listed the gas stations ahead with prices of the fuel and distances to the stations making planning easy. We hadn't gone far when we came upon a cluster of large buildings. The biggest one of all was Columbia Sportsware with 85 docks! 3M and Royal Canine housed other large buildings there.

The terrain became flat with fields stretching out as far as we could see with villages built in perfect squares set in among the crops. Most of the small villages that we saw were walled with old stone walls and most had square cemeteries walled and un-walled sitting directly outside the town. Rows of perfectly straight trees marked divisions between fields. The tallest deciduous trees stood bare with short ever greens coming up halfway up their trunks.

This is about the time that I heard screaming and crying coming from the backseat. Luci found a ladybug. Normally my kids love ladybugs, but it apparently disturbed them to have it in such close proximity trapped in the car. Tiara eventually took it from her sisters and after a bit of screeching on her part, managed to let it out the window where it probably landed on the windshield behind us.
Arianna -- "Can I put the ladybug in nature?"
Luci -- "The orange one is the boy one."
Luci -- "I'm mad at that ladybug!"
Me -- "Why are you mad at the ladybug?"
Luci -- "Because he's a boy!"

This is where the fields started rolling nice gentle waves as if frozen during an earthquake, cottony vines appeared on all the fences and trees overtaking things like southern kudzu, and signs along the highway denoted wildlife there like ducks, deer, and rabbits.

We were driving through an area that had been decimated during the first world war, but was now lush and beautiful. The only visible sign of it's past was a very small national cemetery along the side of the highway. A swampy area was off to the right filled with trees boasting big balls of mistletoe. I joked that it was the original Bayou. Truly, I could have been in Louisiana the way that short stretch of road looked.

There were no big towns visible from the autobahn until we reached Paris. Then we drove under a series of runway bridges with airplanes landing on top of us. The kids loved that. I understand that they are structurally sound, but it makes me a bit nervous to see an airplane heading straight down to land on a bridge above our heads.

Getting into the city itself was crazy and I was thankful that Kirk was driving. The roads were wide, but once we got off the highway, there were no painted lanes at all, so we were never really sure how many cars were supposed to be there. I guess that was the point. At times traffic would narrow down to one lane to avoid a double parked delivery truck. Other times two or three lanes of traffic would weave in and out of each other along the straight roads. What our GPS called roundabouts didn't look at all familiar to me and they weren't exactly circular either. Some even had traffic lights in them so you'd get into it and then stop partway. It was crazy and scary. I tried to focus on the beautiful buildings along side the road instead of stressing about the traffic. The shops and patisseries looked inviting and all the buildings and churches that we passed looked impressive.

Just after 4 hours of driving we arrived at the Hotel St. Augustine. It was just around the corner from the impressive St. Augustine church and another beautiful historical building that sat along side of it. The road was narrow with no place to park or haul in luggage, so I ran in to ask where to go. It wasn't our hotel. He said that our hotel was directly behind the building to my right, but instead of listening, I looked up another Hotel St. Augustine in the GPS and we went there. On another narrow street, Kirk went in. It wasn't it either, but he got good directions. This time we drove by that beautiful old historical building right next to the church St. Augustine. It was called the Cercle National des Armées and didn't look at all like any hotel I've ever stayed in. We ended up parking in the garage right next to it underground beneath a nice park and playground, then grabbed some luggage and went in. The lobby was large and luxurious with a crystal chandelier as wide as I am tall a huge ballroom with decoratively painted walls - murals with clouds as in an old church. This was it. Our room wasn't huge, but is was comfortable even with three beds and looking out my window I had a lovely view of the Eiffel tower peering from behind a building lit up with "Grand Marnier" on every floor. I sat just on the edge in the window (there was a very wide ledge there, so no fear of falling), and looked up to take a picture. My view was of a statue and you can see the top of the St. Augustine just to the left.

The kids liked to be out of the car and run around the room jumping from bed to bed. Elise came out of the bathroom with her arms soaking wet. "I like the little sink," she said. Oh know. There was a "how do you spell Biday?" in the bathroom. Thankfully it only took a day to train her not to play in it, but that night, at every opportunity she went into the bathroom and came out with wet sleeves.

Once we were settled, we went out. The Metro stop was just two blocks away just past a chocolate shop and a Foir Gras shop. We bought our Paris Visite passes (very recommended) for five days which allowed us to jump on the Metro whenever we wanted without worrying about paying fares each time. It was very convenient. We took the "Mushy Peas line" (coined as such by Kirk who had just been to England a week before) from St. Augustine to Franklin D. Roosevelt. When we came up out of the tunnels at FDR, we were standing right on the Champs-Elysees with a flock of Christmas trees on one side of use lit up for the holidays and the expanse of road lined with high end shops and lit up trees in front of us. The weather was perfect and clear. The Champs had enough people walking along it to feel fun and festive, but it wasn't crowded, so Kirk walked ahead with Luci and Arianna walking freely on either side of him and occasionally racing up ahead until he said stop. I walked behind taking it all in, carrying Elise, and talking to Tiara.

The Champs-Elysees is nice. I'm sure if I had an endless supply of someone else's money to spend that it might be fun to go into the trendy shops with their beautifully decorated windows and come out like Pretty Woman with armloads of bags, but at that moment, with the kids and an end to the money supply, it was just a overly-famed shopping road. So, I can say with a faux French accent that I've walked down the Champs with the little trees all twinkling with lights and peered into the windows of Louis Vuitton and Cartier, truly, it isn't anything special. San Francisco is just as beautiful. Luxembourg City has better shopping. The unique thing here in Paris is the view. It's looking down the Champs in one direction and seeing the Arc de Triomphe, looking down the other direction and seeing the gigantic Ferris wheel at the Concorde, then looking off to the right to see the Eiffel Tower sticking up over the buildings. That was amazing. (What's not unique is that, yes, here on the Champs, you can also treat yourself to a not-so-tasty Big Mac with fries - blech! And, if you would like to be taken in by the wandering vendors selling tacky plastic Eiffel Tower key chains, you can own one for only 3Euros each!)

The Arc de Triomphe is beautiful. It is smaller than I thought and really is dwarfed by the city around it, but the structure itself is stunning with the roses carved in its arched ceiling and names of towns written on the walls. The flame to the unknown burned in the center of it's entrance with flowers along side it.

We got tickets and though we wanted to walk up the stairs to the top, the man at the counter in French didn't give us the option. He saw the kids, he knew how many stairs there were to climb, and he pointed to the elevator. Irritated at first, I am thankful now. The climb would have been a lot for the little ones.

The elevator stopped shy of the top at a nice open area with the best gift shop I ended up seeing in Paris - next time I'll get souvenirs there. We took the stairs from there to the top where is was very cold, but we had a fantastic view of the city, the tower, and the Ferris wheel. We could even see the Sacre Coure sitting on the hill to the North of us.

Absolutely amazing. It's all beautiful. The tower is stunning and, at the very end of the Champs, you can see in the second photo above, the tiny circle of light that is the Ferris wheel on the Concorde. In person, that Ferris wheel is anything but small.

The stairs down were fun to take. Down is certainly easier than up and looking down into the spiral was cool. The kids got a kick out of hearing voices, but not being able to see anyone ahead or behind in the tight turns of the stairwell.

That was the end of our evening almost. We were cold, tired, and it was late, so we headed back to the hotel. Not knowing exactly what was good or where to go, we stopped at the restaurant right next to our hotel. Tiara got a cheese plate of laughable size - horrible and extremely disappointing given our location. Arianna and Luci split a roasted chicken with french fries that was very good. I ended up eating it also since the waiter brought two of those and not the pasta dish I'd ordered. The food was mediocre, very un-French, and horrifically priced. It is not a place we'll eat again, but it served the purpose. Thankfully, our meals improved greatly by the end of the week.