Paris - Day Two

Parisian weather was the same our second day in Paris as it was the first day. Unfortunately, the weather would deliver more of the same for the rest of our stay there. Not a big deal, because we would spend our time today inside of the Louvre, the world's most famous museum. Unlike yesterday, the Louvre was actually open. In the video below you can see the old palace of the Louvre building with the new glass pyramid that you descend into to enter.

Tickets in hand, we first set upon the Decorative Arts wing of the museum. This wing has furniture, armor, weapons, jewelery, and tapestries on display. The museum use to be a palace for the French nobility, and this section also has an entire part that is decorated and furnished as it was in the days of Napoleon. The extreme opulence of this place was incredible. Everything was gilded in gold. I also really liked the medieval part of the museum. Here I am "trying on" a thousand year old crown.

After viewing many other really cool pieces of decorative art, we then set out for the Italian masterpieces wing. I'd guess this wing alone holds billions of dollars worth of art, including the world's most famous painting, the Mona Lisa.



While Em and I enjoyed seeing in person all of these unbelievable paintings, we eventually found their religious preoccupation tiresome. 1 out of every 2 paintings depicted little baby Jesus. It reminded me of this scene from Talledega nights. Yes - I view the best works of art in the world and find myself thinking of a Will Ferrell movie.

But, there is one painter that Em liked in particular - the "art within art" scenes of Giovanni Pannini.

After the Louvre, we headed back to Notre Dame to try to get into the towers that we missed yesterday. We arrived to find that the line was ridiculously long and gave up without trying. Zero for two on the towers - we would try back tomorrow. Third time is a charm right?

We then headed out for some lunch. Craving a taste of home, I got a cheeseburger that was surprisingly good. Em had typical French fare - a cheese sandwich with an egg. We then headed back to the hotel to rest for a bit before our night plans.

Recharged, we hit the streets of Paris and grabbed a light dinner. We ended up getting a cheese fondue, which neither of us cared for, and of course a bottle of wine. After that, we had tickets to see "Le Crazy Horse", a famous cabaret show. When you buy tickets you also get a bottle of Champagne to enjoy while you watch. Here we are imbibing prior to the show kicking off. We didn't know what to expect from this show, but both Em and I were thoroughly impressed. The show had really high production values and was very entertaining. One notable bit is that all of the girls in the show, in addition to being gorgeous, are "statistically identical" in all of their measurements. They do this so that when they stand in a row during one of their dances, all of their parts "line up".

After the show, on the walk back home Em grabbed a banana and chocolate crepe for dessert. While delicious, I refused to get a "really thin pancake" (last Ricky Bobby video of the blog, I promise):

Paris - Day One

We didn't have good internet in Paris so blogging was tough. We are in Rome now, but we'll try to recount the 4 nights and 3 days spent in the city of lights....

Our first full day was last Tuesday, May 11th. We woke up to grey skies (not unusual for our trip so far) but were excited to get out and see the city.

We fueled up with a cafe, croissant, fresh squeezed orange juice and baguette with butter and jam (appeared to be the standard breakfast offering, as most cafes were advertising the bundle package). We made our way along the seine to the Louvre - cold rain pelting us, it wasn't the most pleasurable walk, but the Mona Lisa awaited us...We arrived at the glass pyramid entry point, happy to not see a long line to get in. The happiness was short lived however, as the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays - a tip that likely would have been clear in our guide books had we not left them in Boston. Where to go... no guide books, cold, windy, raining - we decided to forge ahead and walk through the garden of Tuilleries and out to the Champs E'lysses with the hope of finding a book store to buy a guide book and a cafe to sit, dry inside and read it. After a fairly miserable 20 minute walk, we found a bookstore, a decent Paris guide book and eventually a cafe/ bar where we could park ourselves and re-energize; Jay grabbed a couple of beers, I a few sparkling waters.

Spirits rekindled we decided to walk over to the famous Notre Dame Cathedral. A quick video of the sites inside...

Next we went across the square from the cathedral to the Crypte Archaelogique - a now museum that contains the remains of houses dating to the 16th-18th centuries. Was very cool to see the foundations of the homes, the remains of the heating systems etc. - were pretty advanced as a civilization even 400 hundred years ago. Time went quickly, we tried to go up the towers of Notre Dame after, but missed the last group allowed by 5 minutes; figured we'd see it one of the next two mornings.... back to the hotel for some R&R, then onto Framboisy - an adorable bistro near the Il Saint Louis that came highly recommended on tripadvisor, but wouldn't break the bank :) - the food didn't disappoint; was fresh, and served by an upbeat woman who owned and operated the restaurant and front of the house all on her own. She even had to act as bouncer when a couple had a tad to much wine at the bar and wouldn't leave/ hung out outside the locked front door knocking and trying to get back in.

Full and happy, we walked back to the hotel through the miniature alleyways and past the miniature cars - here I am posing next to one such mini car....

The Journey to Paris

We started our last half day in Amsterdam by getting some breakfast at a cafe. The cafe served really good coffee but the breakfast itself was more interesting. We ordered ham, cheese, and eggs expecting an omelet. What we got was a scoop of scrambled eggs with cold cut style ham and cheese. Granted, the ham and cheese was very good but it was quite different. We headed back to our hotel and grabbed our bags. Em was extremely happy that we got a taxi to pick us up rather than walking to the train station. I'll reluctantly agree with her that it was much easier.

The train ride to Paris was just over three hours, but very simple and really comfortable. It was a high speed train and I was surprised by how quiet it was from the inside. Em and I spent the time watching "Dexter" on our laptop and looking out the window at the Belgian and French country side. I grabbed this video of the view:

Once we arrived in Paris we took a short taxi ride to our hotel, which is quite nice. It is located in the 5th arrondisement (district), in the Latin Quarter. This section of Paris houses a lot of the college students. We were able to upgrade our room to a junior suite for only a few extra dollars per night, which is great because our original room was barely big enough for the two of us plus our bags! After getting settled, we headed out into a gray and rainy Paris (for those of you keeping track, yes, it has been rainy and gloomy everyday so far). We walked around just catching the sites for a bit before heading to dinner:

At dinner, I got ox that was served on a shish-kabob and Em ordered some Lamb. It was good but not the excellent French culinary experience that you hear so much about. We then headed to a bar to grab a few drinks. We found this place that seemed to be Canadian themed, actually. The TV’s were showing a cricket match and tennis. There were many college kids there enjoying wing night. However, at ½ a Euro per wing, coming from Watertown where there is 10 cent win night, I didn't think that it was a very good deal. After enjoying 1 or 2 “1664”s (the name of the beer), Em and I called it a night and meandered back to the hotel.

I’ll end this blog with some random thoughts about impressions of Amsterdam, Paris, and Europe in general.

1. In Amsterdam, if you mess up parallel parking you can fall into a canal. I meant to take a picture of how close the cars park to the canal (no guardrails), but I forgot…

2. The cyclists in Amsterdam are crazy. They are everywhere, and if you get in their bike path they will end you. Seriously – they’re nuts and none of them wear helmets. I think their brazenness is kind of interesting, because I’m pretty sure if you hit a dude on a bicycle both parties involved are in for an unpleasant experience. It’s like the Dutch are a nation of kamikazes.

3. Portion sizes aren’t really all that different than what you get in America, with two exceptions – coffee and ice cream are both much smaller. Actually, in Amsterdam portion sizes were very large. Probably because it is so touristy.

4. In public bathrooms, they don’t have paper towels to use to dry your hands. Instead, they have this weird towel wheel that you pull and it gets reused a million times. I can’t explain it well – it’s very strange. Google it. It’s weird and somewhat gross.

5. The toilets here all have two flush options – little flush and mega flush. Emmy always has to use the mega flush.

6. Everyone in Amsterdam speaks very good English and is very nice. Most people in Paris seem to speak some English, but you can tell they dislike speaking it. That being said, the stereotype of the French being very rude is not true.

7. The internet connection at our hotel in Paris is very shaky, so it will be harder to blog and call home via Skype.

Finally, I thought I’d document how technologically wired we are in our travels through Europe. If you thought I was going off the grid for a month, y’all crazy. We have:

1 Dell Laptop

2 iPhones, each with a 100mb international data plan

1 Digital SLR camera

1 Regular Digital Camera

1 Flip HD Video Camera

2 Amazon Kindle reading devices

2 Universal power adapters

1 Set of portable mini-speakers

1 Nintendo DS portable game system with 3 games

All sorts of wires and charges.

It is 1:00 AM here and we already had our first full day in Paris, but I’ll blog about that tomorrow.

Zaanse Schans

We spent our third day in Europe by taking a day trip out of Amsterdam to the nearby village of Zaanse Schans - a popular tourist destination known for its working windmills, cheese farm, and clog factory. We went down to the train station to catch the bus, stopping at a local grocery store to pick up some fruit for breakfast. Arriving at the train station, we first picked up our train tickets for the ride to Paris tomorrow before catching the bus to Zaanse Schans. The exact location of the bus stop proved a bit tricky to find, but eventually we found our way. 5 Euro and a short 40 minute ride through the suburbs of Amsterdam later, we arrived at our destination.

Our first stop at Zaanse Schans was a cheese shop/farm. The dutch are known for their cheese and this little shop proved why. The shop had nearly a dozen different types of cheese to sample, all of them delicious. Em and I decided to buy a little bit of a herb cheese to keep in our hotel mini-bar for a snack. The picture to the left shows the room where they churn the cheese.

After the cheese shop, we walked down the road some more to take our first tour of a windmill. This windmill is still used today to grind pigments that create paint. The windmill had a ladder that allowed you to climb to the top and get a view of all of its inner workings. I was struck by how quickly the sails (if that's the right word?) of the mill turned and by the large size of the gears and grinding stone.

Gears of the Windmill

Leaving the windmill, we walked further down the road and eventually took a short boat ride across the river Zaanse so we could see the other part of the village. This place had the look and feel off an old city, with many of the houses built over 200 years ago. Given that it was a Sunday, none of the local pubs were open and there wasnt much going on. However, it was here that we spotted the first dutch Vistaprint customer of our journey. They were sporting a Vistaprint lawn sign in their window.

Having worked up an appetite, we headed towards the local restaurant. A tourist trap that served traditional dutch pancakes, another famous dish of Holland. These pancakes aren't like the ones in the states. They are thinner and more like crepes. They are served with a variety of toppings. I opted for a heart stopping ham and cheese. Em for apples and cinnamon. Both were delicious, but I particularly liked the cheese that smothered my pancake.

Our next stop was a clog "factory". This shop had a man demonstrating making a clog, using more modern day tools. It also had a bunch of old clogs on display. And of course, it had LOTS of clogs for sale. Em and I tried some clogs on and made this cutesy little video.

Content with enough clog related information to last a life time, we jumped back in the bus and headed back to Amsterdam.

After recharging at the hotel for an hour or two, we headed out for the Anne Frank House. The Anne Frank House is the house where Anne Frank and her family hid in the attic from the Nazi's for several years before being betrayed and captured. The house has been restored to how it would have been in the days during the war and is now a very good museum. The museum was interesting, but of course also very somber. They had on display Anne Frank's actual diary along with other personal effects of the family.

Next up was dinner, we walked around for awhile before finding a Thai restaurant that looked good. We particularly liked their spring rolls. The last stop of the evening was an Irish themed bar that was showing the Celtics game. Again, being that it was Sunday night, Amsterdam was quite a bit sleepier than it was the last two nights. We had a few Heineken's and then called it a night.

Amsterdam - Part 2

Our first full day in Amsterdam started not so much with a jump out of bed but more of a slow roll likely due to a combination of booze and jet lag. We finally emerged to grey skies but intrigued spirits. First order of business - jackets! Jay probably didn't think he'd be spending his first day in a department store, shopping, but given our poor packing it was necessary. He was at least happy to see that in Europe he was no longer a size medium, but instead an XLarge. We emerged from the store with warmer digs, looking very European.

About an hour after meandering through the alleys of Amsterdam, (Side note: heavily trash laden in some areas, the garbage men are on strike) we arrived at the Anne Frank House only to find that about 500 other people had a similar idea. (Side thought: It was very odd to see tourists standing next to the Anne Frank plaque, posing for pictures with huge, gaping smiles, when only 60 years ago, the same site brought so much pain and misery to a family and many others.) To wait or not...it was cold, we were hungry and Jay noticed a sign that said if you made online reservations, you didn't have to wait; Anne Frank would wait until tomorrow. On to the next site, Van Gogh museum.

En route to the Van Gogh museum we passed a busy Indonesian place; we had heard from the guy sitting next to us on the plane over, that Indonesian food in Amsterdam was really good so we decided to give it a try.

Jay ordered a sensible tasting dish with a little of most things.

I ordered an absurd tasting dish with a little of what seemed like everything on the menu; it was so big it required an additional table be set up adjacent to ours to hold all of the plates.

We left full - but both agreeing that the best part of the meal was the chip like thing and peanut dip they served in the beginning; at least we tried it.

On to the Van Gogh museum, a short walk away. The museum highlighted Van Gogh's short life from beginning to end - great at providing the story to give context to his works.

Tired from our walking, eating and learning, we began our trek back to the hotel. Along the way, we were able to watch a few of the bikers in the Giro d'Italia spin by; their maintenance cars in close pursuit just in case a tire needed changing. We had seen people waiting all day at various parts of the city so was nice to catch a glimpse of what all of the fuss was about. (Side thought: While exciting for the 1.5 seconds that the cyclist is passing, seemed like an odd thing for people to line up and wait to cheer on all day for hours? to each his own. ) We made it back to the hotel around 5:30 to rest up and prepare ourselves for our second night out on the town.

Found a cute spot to grab dinner - Jay opted for the dish of amsterdam (Dutch beefsteak and potatoes), I had the less traditional, cheese tortellini with a spinach sauce.

Night 2 then progressed similarly to night 1....

Welcome to Amsterdam

Em and I spent our first night in Amsterdam. We started off the night by just walking around until we found a little bar that looked like a fun place to stop and get our first Vistabreak beers - a round of Heinekens, of course. We also sampled the local food. The place served typical pub food, so we ordered a very American snack of French fries and chicken nuggets. However, just like Pulp Fiction told us, the French Fries were served with a side of mayonnaise. You can see the mayo laden tater to the right. After a few more beers, we headed out to see the sights of the red light district. For those unaware of the red light district, it's basically full of these houses of ill repute where prostitutes stand in front of windows facing the street. The johns then walk down the street and pick out their woman like they were ordering cold cuts from a deli. If this place were in the states, it would be a war zone, but it is actually very touristy and we both felt safe. There are even tour guides giving walking tours of all the "sights". Even more surprising, the bar we spent most of the night at was run completely by one, older woman. No bouncer!

First beers...

At the bar in the red light district we met a group of middle age guys who were in the military and in Amsterdam for some sort of conference. They were sitting at a table that had a perfect vantage point of four of the prostitutes standing in their windows. You can see our vantage point in the video below. They were betting each other on how long it would take a john to leave the prostitute after entering the house. They generally set the over/under at 10 minutes. They used all sort of funny military lingo to describe this situation, such as:

• "Their is too much chaff. Can't make an ID" - Too many tourists standing in front of the windows, so we couldn't see the prostitutes.
• "Going to redeploy to another base" - Move to another bar.
• "Time to deploy ordinance?" - How long has the john been in the whore house?

After we left this bar we capped the night off with some greasy pizza and then headed back for the hotel.

Bon Voyage

Today Em and I left for Vistabreak - a 30 day whirlwind tour around Europe. Our first destination is Amsterdam. I surprised Em by having a limousine pick us up at our house to take us to the Airport. On the way there, in the limo I got down on a knee, and after over 4 years of dating, proposed. I'm sure Em would say finally proposed. She reluctantly accepted. That is her wearing the ring in the picture. Our limo driver, Joe, stopped at this spot along Memorial drive and took some pictures of us while we sipped champaign. I can't post those pictures quite yet - need to get another wire to connect Em's camera.

At the airport everything went very smoothly. We spent the time calling people to tell them the news and eventually the plane boarded on time. We took British Airways - which is a great airline by the way. After watching a few movies, we landed in London Heathrow, a very modern airport, to catch our connection to Amsterdam. Once arriving in Amsterdam we had to fight through some long lines to get a train ticket, but after 2 flights, a train ride, and a long walk with our luggage we at long last arrived at our hotel room in Amsterdam. After being up for about 24 hours, both Em and I were grateful that we could check in early. We caught a few hours of sleep and our now getting ready to head to dinner and checkout Amsterdam's famed red light district (giggity). Being that we are in Amsterdam, my plan is to have a Heineken, then an Amstel, then repeat the process many times.

Things forgotten:

• Jackets (it's pretty cold here in Amsterdam)
• All of our tourist guide books - guess we will have to go it along. As Bill O'Reilly would say, "F*@# it - we'll do it live!"
• Wire to download pictures to camera