Helloooooooo???

*tap tap tap*

Is anyone out there?

*shields eyes with hand*

I can see you, really, I can, but I can't hear you.

I know that someone(s) from Europe and the U.S. and the U.K. and Panama and even someone from Slovakia have googled "italy-shirtless-edward-new moon" and "robert-pattison-new-moon-shirtless" and "edward-cullen" and "vanity-fair-italy-edward-and-bella".

And I thought I had it bad.

Come on, please leave a comment if you land here from any search. Even though there are some google searches I'd rather not be associated with, I'd sure like to know who's out there.

*crickets chirping*

Statcounter and Hamburg, Germany

I love this statcounter thingy. I checked my stats today to see who's been by in the 24 hours or less since I added it.

Someone from Hamburg, Germany checked out the "House Concert" post. Our musical bud Eric Brace is in Hamburg today, so, hello, Eric! Have a wonderful time in Europe. I am so jealous; I'm ready to do some traveling far away from here.

We'll see Eric and his friend, Peter Cooper, at Ashland Coffee & Tea on May 24.

LTH will perform at the Vintage Virginia Wine Fest at Centreville, VA, on June 1. Wine and music, my favorite combination!

And Steve Wedemeyer will be with them that weekend, too. An added bonus.

Paris Street Market and bakery, morning of July 15, which was my birthday. In Paris. Have I beaten that to death yet?

I don't think so.

This is my second attempt to show you the amazing street market. You know you want to see it. I know I want you to see it. Blogger disagrees. Let's see if I can get through this one without resorting to using htm. I know just enough about that to screw up anything I touch. (Thank you, ebay.)

*deep breath*

Okay.


So we got up fairly early on my birthday (told you). At least, it was early for me when I'm not working. During the school year I have to be dragged out of bed kicking and screaming at 5:40 a. stinkin' m. Actually, Tom wakes me very gently and quietly, usually calling me sweetheart and saying it's time to get up. He doesn't even attempt to wake me until he's showered and dressed, and while I'm stumbling into the clothes I laid out the night before and brushing my teeth, he's taking Zippy outside. Zippy's the dog. Chester is his best friend. Could I have ever found a better man? No way.







Anyway, that morning we were headed to the bakery a couple of streets over for breakfast when we saw a street market in the median strip of a side street.


This was an incredible market.








There were shoes, purses (Gucci, anyone?) (Yeah, right.), scarves, tablecloths, all kinds of veggies, fruits, breads, meats, cheeses, fresh eggs, thong panties, anything one could think of (and you know who you are). I'm not adding these photos in any particular order, since the last time I tried that I lost that stupid html tag somewhere.






Everything was displayed in such creative ways, not veggies piled on tables like at a produce stand here in the States.

There were cooked foods available. Some stalls only had olives--but about 50 kinds of olives. Some had fresh eggs and fresh butter. I was practically drooling by the time we left.




There were stalls devoted to gorgeous cut flowers, potted plants and herbs, fresh veggies, and just about every kind of cheese available.

The placement of these photos offends my sense of symmetry, but I can't figure out how to arrange them. I took hundreds of photos, but I've selected the best to share. Such as this one of a dog at the market.



Then we went back to "our" bakery and had breakfast. Their croissants with fresh butter, the pain au chocolat, and hot chocolate were all just incredibly tasty.












The hot chocolate was just that--cocoa and hot milk, with sugar cubes on the side. Oh my gosh, it was so good!!!

That morning was cool (70s), but even when it was in the 90s the following week, that was some kind of good and I had to have it for breakfast. The tiny bakery was air conditioned, so that helped.

We frequently went back to the bakery for snacks. I wish we could have brought it home with us!

Did I mention that it was my birthday?

Evening in Paris, July 14

Well, we did get to bed after midnight, but I'm betting that it was much later than that. It didn't get dark until 10:30 or so, so we could sightsee much later than while we were in Rome. It was even better in London! I could easily get used to having the sun set at nearly midnight and be up before 5, if I didn't have to work. And if I didn't have to experience the much, much shorter days during the winter.

These are some random photos I took that night. This one is an apartment building on a side street. I was impressed that many buildings had flower boxes and trees on their tiny balconies.

This is a view of streets near our hotel. The tall weird building is the Tour Montparnasse. I don't know anything about it except that it's big and evidentally not considered to be attractive by some people. We liked it because, as long as we could see it, we knew that we could fairly easily find our way home, even at night. There's an observation deck on top, but we never went to check it out. I wish I had, as it would have given us a really good view of the surrounding area.

In the next one, you can see that motorcycles can be parked just about anywhere! The street is on the other side of the motorcycles. Note to Betty: I think that the greenish-blue object in the lower right corner is a public toilet. They're a lot bigger than they look.


And here is our first view of the Eiffel Tower. Pretty exciting. I didn't realize just how close we were to it. We used the Metro to get there, but walked all around our district. You can see it if you squint your eyes and look down the avenue of trees.

This intersection is about a block from our hotel. You can barely see the Galleries Lafayette sign; it's supposed to be this grand shopping mall, but I wasn't impressed. Maybe I only found one small wing of it. I did manage to buy a pair of cropped pants and t-shirt there.

You know how it is. What's the use of going to PARIS and not buying any clothes???

It's like going to Rome and not seeing the Sistine Chapel.

Another random street. Just about all the restaurants, bars, and cafes had outside seating that took up most of the sidewalk.







This place (to the right) is called Le Nemrod. That's why I took a picture of it.

"Au Chien Qui Fume"--"At the Dog Who Smokes"? I should check some website to see what "au" means. It's only been 35 years since I took a French class; I should remember something that simple. I wish that photo was better. Usually I check them to make sure they're okay right after I take them, but we had the light and were crossing the road, so I had to move on.

And here's the obligatory shot of a Paris shoe store window. I'm sure there were some non-Birkenstock shoes in the shops.

I take pictures of dogs and shoes, Tom likes pictures of cars. Here are two leetle teensy cars (the first of many, as with the dogs and shoes).



I really like this picture. I was taking a photo of of a pretty building with nice ironwork and plants, and a man with a little girl in his arms was looking out and waved. That just made my night. He saw a tourist taking a photo of his window and he didn't shoot me. He waved.

It was wayyy past our dinner time, so we checked out the restaurants as we walked. We finally found one that looked to be reasonable, and sat down at a table right next to the curb. It seemed to be some kind of chain restaurant as we saw others on our travels, but it had good food. Or, at least, decent food.

I was amused that the restaurants with air conditioning made a big deal out of it, with hand-lettered signs in the windows. A/c? Doesn't every restaurant have it? We'd find out in a couple of days that, although a/c wasn't necessary that night, it would be a couple of days later, and the places that had it were the places to be.

Just a couple of doors down the street from the restaurant was this produce stand. They were everywhere. And the produce looked good.

These photos were taken after 10 p.m.! Look at all the light still in the sky.

Paris photos

are up!

Well, all but the ones that Blogger won't let me upload.

Paris, at last!

So we got to Paris bright and early Friday morning, July 14. We managed to find the right Metro line and stop, and we walked out into the early morning light of Paris. As sleepy as I was (you know that I am not a morning person), I was thrilled to actually be in Paris. It was cool (probably mid-60s), the light was perfect, and somehow I managed to lose the photos I took on our way to the hotel.

What impressed me most was how clean everything was. The streets were being cleaned--washed, actually--and garbage trucks were picking up trash. Not so remarkable, you may say. But, remember, this is a national holiday and the street cleaners and garbage men were WORKING. You won't see that here in the good ol' USA.


There wasn't much traffic so we could stop and gawk as much as we wanted. It was just so cool to finally be in Paris. Strangely, all signs were in French, adding to the unreality of it all. We passed a huge marquee for a movie theater (advertising "The Da Vinci Code" in its original language--we really should have gone to see it before taking the tour), an internet cafe, a huge shopping center, and lots of little restaurants and a tiny grocery store before we came to our hotel.

We'd reserved our hotel (Timhotel Montparnasse) after getting a recommendation from my friend, Marie, who lives in Paris. It was €60 a night, has a bathroom in the room and not down the hall, and close to a train station and two Metro stops. She recommended it as safe and clean, and she was right. We loved it. It was on the second floor (1st to everyone but us) right next to a bar. Actually, it was between several bars, all of which spilled out onto the sidewalks, especially at night. The neon light for the hotel was right outside our window, and the streetlights were very bright, so we didn't need to turn on the lights in the room to find anything at night. There's no air-conditioning, but since the first two days and nights in Paris were cool, it was very comfortable.

The hotel was unusual, at least unusual to us. It was in two buildings separated by a restaurant; the lobby was two doors down the block. The hotel seemed to take up the top several floors of several buildings, but all of the upper floors couldn't be accessed by one entrance. The part we were in had two rooms on our floor and I don't know how many on the upper floors. The room on the bottom floor in our building was used as the breakfast room and also contained the elevator--a very very slow one--for our part of the building.

The first couple of nights it was really noisy, what with the bar crowds outside, loud music, and city traffic. But we were so tired that we slept anyway. The rest of the time we stayed there it was quiet, but it was a lot hotter.



We were to be met at our hotel at 8:45 by our tour guide. We waited, and waited, and waited some more. Finally Tom had the concierge call the tour company. Good thing, because we'd have been waiting all day. We hadn't called 48 hours in advance to confirm the tour, even though it was guaranteed by a credit card and we'd received confirmation of its receipt. The tour was cancelled.

To say that I was unhappy is a gross understatement. The Da Vinci Code tour was something I'd wanted to take since I first heard of them two or three years ago. I loved the book and was really looking forward to seeing the exotic places where it took place. We'd figured that we wouldn't need to take any other tours in Paris, since this one would cover most of the famous spots that we wanted to see.

We got the address of and directions to the tour company and headed that way. Streets in that area were closed to traffic because the big Bastille Day parade was starting at 10 a.m. Great. Crowds of people and I was in a foul mood. Talk about the ugly American.....

To recap: Jet lag. Full, hot day in Germany, most of it walking. Hanging around train station late at night. Trying to sleep sitting up in uncomfortable seats with a stranger in the compartment. Having to be up and moving before 7 a.m. in a strange city. Needing to be at a certain place by a certain time when we didn't know where that place was. Having paid big bucks ($388) for a tour and gee whiz, I'm sorry, but you didn't call to confirm the tour, so we've cancelled it.

There's no excuse for my behavior that morning, but I'll give it a try. I was tired, I was tired, I was tired. There. Does that work for you? Me neither.

We'd planned to leave Paris Monday night after going to England for Stonehenge. The next DVC tour wasn't till the following Wednesday. Did I suck it up and behave like an adult? No. I wanted to take that tour b-a-d bad. So Tom gave up his dream to go to Normandy and see the beach that his father fought on. I got my way, and we signed up for the tour that took place five days later. We'd only planned on staying in Paris for 3 nights, but we ended up staying 5 nights. Bummer. What a rough life.

There was only one tour left that we could have taken that Friday, one to Givenchy. But I was too petulant to allow myself (and poor Tom) to enjoy something that wasn't that damn DVC tour. Tom asked me if I wanted to take a bus tour of Paris, but no, I didn't (I don't remember that part, but I don't think he'd lie about something as stupid as that. I don't think he'd lie to me at all.).


About that time there was a thunderous sound and the clerks ran out of the office yelling "the jets! The jets!" I looked around for Tattoo, but he was nowhere to be seen. It was the start of the Bastille Day parade. We were on the Rue de Rivoli, close to the Champs Elysee, and the parade went down the Champs Elysee and then split, with half going down one side of the Louvre and half going down the other side, the Rue de Rivoli.

So we went out and watched the half of the parade that came down our way. It was pretty impressive to see the French troops on their tanks and jeeps.

After the parade went by, we crossed the road to the Louvre and walked around the courtyard. We didn't attempt to go into the museum since we would see a very small part the following Wednesday. That really wasn't that smart, since we saw only the Mona Lisa and a few things on the fly on the tour. Anyway, the courtyard was beautiful. The Pyramid, the main entrance, is supposed to be a big deal and controversial; many Parisiens think it's ugly and doesn't fit. Well, it doesn't, but that's part of its charm. There are fountains that are mentioned in The Da Vinci Code, so I dutifully photographed the mist rising from their surfaces, just as Robert Langdon saw when he was taken to the museum late at night. Except this was in full sunlight.

Cool.

The temperature that day and the next was just perfect. It was in the low 70s, very pleasant for walking. I saw some dogs and was happy.

One thing that impressed me was the number of armed guards around. They patrolled the Galleries Lafayette regularly, every day, not just on Bastille Day. (The Galleries is a shopping mall, and it is right across the street from our hotel. I planned to make a shopping trip there before we left Paris.) It was a little jolting to see uniformed men carrying what look like Uzis or something else very deadly (I know less than nothing about firearms.), but at the same time, I guess they're taking shopping terrorists very seriously. I know that I wouldn't think of trying to get by with anything.

That night we settled into the hotel and did some laundry. (I guess that I should tell you about our luggage. We each took a carry-on size bag and that was it. Well, I did take a tote bag for my knitting and books and M&Ms and almonds and whatever else I could cram in. We limited what we packed because we knew we'd be dragging those bags all over Europe, and I don't do heavy or bulky. {{{insert photos here}}}I bought coordinating light-weight wash-and-dry pieces of clothing, all black or tan, with a couple of bright shirts. It was great. Upside: Everything that we washed dried by morning and we always had clean clothes. Downside: We had to do laundry by hand every couple of nights.) Afterwards we went out for a long walk, I took lots of photos, and we found a restaurant around 10 p.m.--and it was still light! I love Europe in the summer!

After midnight we settled in for the night. The three nearby (as in right under our room) bars were all wound up and there was loud music and talking, but who cared. We were in PARIS!

P.S. Here are the gratuitous dog photos.

Yorkies are cute no matter what language they understand.