After a long hiatus, here is the continuation of the Europe trip log!

It was Sunday the 21st of August. Sunday in Harlow means essentially no bus service and given we were very far from the train station, we were at a bit of a loss how to get to London. Thankfully, my cousin generously gave us a ride to Epping, a nearby town that is connected to the tube (zone 6, mind you) and we were able to get to town. By the time we arrived it was time for “second breakfast” since the commute itself is nothing to sneeze at and we had a good 4 hours of artifact-viewing ahead. We had coffee and a bagel at a cafe, then tackled the museum. Naturally, we started with the Egyptian antiquities and saw the Rosetta stone, which has been moved to a more prominent location since my last visit. I particularly enjoyed seeing an large black stone with a carving (perhaps of celestial objects?) that had been re-used as a millstone. We wandered into the Persian/Assyrian/Hittite area and saw an entire hallway filled with carvings from the palace of Ashurnasir (although I might have this mixed up with another palace). One story was of some prisoners who escaped a castle by swimming down the nearby river holding on to animal skins sewn closed and filled with air. We also saw the brass fittings of 7-metre tall door and some more gryphons and lions (Ishtar’s of course). Next it was upstairs to see British & European artifacts including some lovely Roman mosaics, Bas-Yutz Flagons, a variety of paintings of St. George and the Dragon, and some fasctinating midieval artifacts. I found the “portable alters” intriguing. There was also an apocraphyl illustrated story of the life of Jesus that went something like this: Jesus and a boy were playing together. The other boy did something to make Jesus angry and he used his God-like power to strike the other boy dead. Mary comes along and scolded Jesus, who resignedly restored the boy’s life. Classic.

Of course no trip is complete without visiting the Greek area which features statues and carvings that used to be in the Pantheon (and may return to Greece soon). After this we took a detour to the Korean gallery where we saw some celadon pottery and a “go” board. Dan, a fan of “go” was quite pleased to see it, but noticed the pieces were not set up correctly. The board is actually a cube and there are metal strings tied taught underneath the top, so every time a piece is set down, it makes a sound. For no apparent reason, out in the hallway there was a collection of statues of Indian gods carved in black stone. We then visited the large hall with Indian and East Asian artifacts including carvings from the Stupa of Amaravati. There were many interesting sculptures there, but we were starting to run out of energy and didn’t make it through all of it, as much as we wanted to.

We went outside, sat down on the bench, and had a snack. Once we were up to walking again, we headed off to Hyde Park and walked to Speaker’s Corner. It was quite an interesting collection of people including old-timey tent-revival style preaching, groups of Mullahs and serious-looking men, Christian atheists, consirpacy theorists and so-forth. There were two men having a debate on the grass and everyone was crowded around them, so it must have been an interesting one.

We took the tube back to Epping and met up with my second cousin and his partner. It had been 12 years since I saw him last, so it was really nice that we had a chance to see each other. We all went to a chip shop for supper. We then went down the street to a pub for a pint (half, in my case) and had an interesting discussion about cybernetics. Back at their flat they gave us some advice on what to see in London and then it was time to head back. We took a taxi to Harlow which was quite reasonably priced at only 9 quid.

Photo from here.

After a few hours of sleep, we woke up and chatted with my cousin Yvonne and briefly with her daughter Maria. The last time I saw her she was an 18 month old baby so it was really exciting and strange to see her as a teenager. We decided to try walking to the train station, something that everyone from my Dad to my cousins warned me was a bad idea because it was too far, but we wanted to try it anyway.

Harlow New Town is a city built in the 1950s and is unique in England in that it hasn’t been around for hundreds of years like all the others. This means that it is designed quite differently and instead of a main street lined with pubs, chemists and the like, it has a central square with all the shopping centres and the bus station. We were in the south east corner of the town and the town centre and train station were on the north end and a fair bit further west, so it was certainly not a short walk. This was complicated by the way the city was designed – it seems to be divided up into different sections and between them, there are large fields! So we walked out of Yvonne’s neighbourhood and in no time we were walking along a sidewalk that had a large green field on one side and a major road on the other. There were several places where there were underpasses for the path to go under the traffic circles and there were lots of trees along the paths. Eventually we made it to the town centre and looked around a bit. I think the massive ASDA grocery store was new and we went in there to look around. It was really cold inside and I was freezing so I kept pestering Dan to hurry up and of course he wanted to look at everything. After that we made an attempt at walking to the train station from the town centre, and this was very problematic due to the aforementioned field and tree situation and ended up taking over 20 minutes. So overall, walking from her house to the train station took an hour, which we finally admitted was too long, even for us. That meant that next week when we were planning to visit London, we had to submit ourselves to the mercy of the Harlow Transit System, about which we had only heard bad things…

We walked back to Yvonne’s and she had made a delicious spaghetti dinner for us. We watched a few episodes of Absolutely Fabulous but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Dan enjoyed it a lot, as he had seen a few episodes in Canada and these were ones he hadn’t seen. Maria, her friend and Dan went to the nearby chippy to get some chips and Dan came back with some curry sauce that I liked but he wasn’t too sure about.

So I had this brilliant idea that we could take an overnight bus from Liverpool to London. The train was too expensive, and it seemed like the night would be safer and have less traffic. We purchased our tickets online in advance and when we got to the Liverpool bus station we were excited to hear there was a double decker coach coming. “What luxury” we thought. “How exciting”. It came and we lined up to board. We had to give our backpacks to someone who put all the luggage in the holding area under the back of the bus. Since it was stopping at lots of different places (including Oxford and Heathrow Airport) they had a letter code for each stop. Ours was “V” for “Victoria station” in London, so the lady wrote a big V on our backpacks with a white fabric pencil. We haven’t bothered to wash them off yet and you can still see the one on Dan’s! Anyway after that we boarded the bus and went to the upper deck. It wasn’t too crowded so there was lots of room and we could sit together. The seats didn’t recline too much, though, and there was an emergency window-breaking axe thing bolted to the wall near the window where Dan wanted to lean his head (but couldn’t).

We bought what we thought was the English equivalent of Perrier at the grocery store at the end of the street from my Aunt and Uncle’s place. We opened it for the trip and were very unpleasantly surprised to find to find it was a mixture of very bitter lime and aspartame – guaranteed to make one more thirsty, not less. Unfortunately it was all we had aside from about 400 mL of water in our water bottles, so we had no choice but to drink the horrible stuff.

On the way out of the city went through one of the tunnels under the Mersey which was cool. We were on the highway soon and everything seemed fine. We gave an attempt at sleeping which worked for a while, but a number of things started happening which made it very difficult to sleep. First of all, the entire Salvic population of northern England must have been on this bus because we were surrounded by people speaking in some Slavic toungue. We were essentially they only people who didn’t speak the laguage. That meant, unfortunately, that were several conversations going on at once, including the two ladies behind us who talked all the way to Heathrow, about 6 bloody hours. And then they would rustle things around in their bags and eat and talk some more, which was incredibly annoying. The other problem was that there were no cup holders anywyere on this bus and so when people finished drinking something, they would toss the empty bottles or cans on the floor of the bus. This wouldn’t have been too much of a problem in North America, but since the English minor highway system is based on traffic circles, it meant that the bottles and cans would skitter from one side of the bus to the other every time we went through a traffic circle (about every 20 minutes). That was so incredibly frustrating that I eventually started getting up and catching them and putting them in places where they couldn’t roll around. The stupid thing is that one would think that after the first time it happened these people would realise how annoying it was and try to put all their bottles somewhere (how about back on one’s bag???) and they kept adding more and more bottles over the course of the night. We couldn’t sleep and I guess they couldn’t either, but then again they were all still talking and it didn’t bother them so much.

Needless to say, we didn’t have a very good bus ride and even though it was an 8 hour ride I don’t think we managed more than 3 hours of sleep. Once we arrived, we desperately had to go to the washroom but when we went inside the bus terminal, one of the washrooms was closed. Well, what do they expect after an 8 hour bus ride? We managed to find another and were incensed that we each had to pay 20 pence just to get in to the washrooms. I later found out this is a long tradition in England (although it used to only be a penny, hence the term “spending a penny” to mean going to the washroom).

Now we had to get to Harlow, so we tried to get into Victoria tube station and had a very difficult time doing so. Finally we found the entrance and got inside. We had some garbage from the trip that we were trying to get rid of, but after the incidents on the underground that summer, they had removed all garbage bins and so we had to stick it back in our bags. I tried to get a tube map, but the information booth didn’t open until 8:30 and it was only 7:00 AM. We tried the automatic ticket things but I couldn’t figure out how to buy a ticket to Liverpool Street station and eventually just went to buy one from the wicket and I got the train tickets at the same time. Because it was rush hour on a week day it cost 20 pounds for the tickets – that’s over $40 for two one way tickets to a London suburb!

Anyway we got to the station and took our train without too much trouble and were able to relax a bit on the train ride. When we arrived in Harlow we called my cousin Steve who very kindly offered to give us a ride to my other cousin’s house where we were staying. We were so tired and disoriented that we were unable to do much more than say “thanks very much” and then we were off to sleep.

Aug 19th. Today we visited my uncle Jack and aunt Barb. They drove us around to see the places where my Dad and my uncle lived in the ‘Pool. One of the houses they lived in burned down and they were bombed out of the other one. The latter was near the rail lines, and given Liverpool’s importance as a port city, the rail lines leading to and from the port were bombed on more than one occasion. This house was half a block from the train tracks. Of course all is rebuilt today. The last one we saw was out in a “new development”. I guess the city had built this neighbourhood for low income families that were bombed out, and moved many of them out there with the promise that things would be better there. Not surprisingly they were not. Apparnently there was just one little store (in a bus, if you can believe it) and a pub for the entire neighbourhood, so they were forced to go all the way to the city centre for groceries and other things they needed. It wasn’t a happy area even today, and still had a mobile “food” store parked in the middle, only this time it was a corrugated metal portable building. I’ve always known that things were tough for my Dad, his brothers and sisters and my grandmother, but phrases like “If your Dad’s family were together today, they would have their own social worker” paint a pretty good picture. Apparently my grandfather cashed some tax rebates that my uncle had recieved in the mail (they had the same first and last names) and never told him about it! “Not happy times”, as my aunt Lynn said.

On a happier note, we saw the schools where my Dad went – The Calderstones (same school as John Lennon) and the Blue Coats, a posh school for the brightest students (nice going, Dad!). We went for a nice walk in Calderstones park and went through almost the entire park in search of the 1000 year old oak tree. Nobody remembered exactly where it was, and everyone we asked kind of knew but wasn’t certain. It wasn’t on the map either, but eventually we found it. It is propped up and would have otherwise have fallen down since the middle is all rotted out, but is still alive and producing acorns! Its also not very tall, but its massive! I think that’s the oldest living thing I have ever seen. There were a variety of gardens including a “tree garden” with various types of trees, a rock garden, and a Japanese garden. The Japanese garden was very nice. We also saw some some “wood pigeons” and real English Lavendar which smelled heavenly. By this point we had “walked the legs off” my poor uncle, so it was off home for lunch. We saw John Lennon’s house (outside only) on the way to my aunt and uncle’s place.

After lunch, my uncle told us about when he was at sea. Being a boy in a port city, the desire to go to sea was irresistable. Because he was too young to get a job, his first attempted journey to sea was as stowaway, but he never made it out of the Mersey. Eventually he got a job working for he Royal Mail and went to Panama, Brazil, California, Vancouver (!) and many Carribean islands. He also worked for an oil comapny and visited the Persian Gulf (they were never allowed to go on land though, and he said that was the most boring bit). He had a lot of photos which was really neat to see. He was also the one who brought back the infamous family parrot, which if I remember correctly, swore and would yell “there’s nobody home, go away” when someone knocked on the front door.

My uncle was quite tired by now, so they sent us back to Lynn and Fred’s place, who took us out to see the two cathedrals of Liverpool. On the way we stopped at the Williamson Tunnels, which was closed. We visited the Catholic cathedral first (nicknamed the Mersey Funnel because of its roof that makes it look like an up-side down funnel). There was a wedding going on so we just peeked in the doors, but it was very striking. The “funnel” part is all stained glass and the sun shines through it and lights up the colours like crazy. Due to technical problems, Fred had to go back home and Lynn took us to the Philharmonic Pub, the former gentleman’s club across from the opera. Its open to all these days, including Canadian tourists. The interoir is oak and glass and it even has stained glass windows. And not to be forgotten are the marble urinals in the Men’s WC. Fred caught up with us and we headed off to the Anglican cathedral next.

If there is one word to describe this building, it would be big. Here are the statistics, from their website:

Liverpool Cathedral is the largest cathedral in Britain.
Length: 619 feet
Area: 104,275 sq. feet
Choir Vault: 116 feet
Nave Vault: 120 feet
Height of Tower: 331 feet
Under Tower Vault: 175 feet
Tower Arches: 107 feet
The bells have the highest and heaviest peal in the world.
There are two pipe organs in Liverpool Cathedral. The Grand Organ is the largest in the UK and probably the largest operational organ in the world.
The organ has 9765 pipes.

Like I said, big. And impressive. It took 74 years to build and my Dad says that it was always under construction when he was a kid.

They took us downtown and we visited the library but unfortunately the museum next door was closed. We ran to the central shopping area and bought a gift for Tyler in the Liverpool Football Club store as a thank you for taking care of our mice while we were gone.

After this we went home for supper. Fred asked us what we wanted to do for dinner and since he had been telling us about the “chippy” the entire time, we were curious and wanted to experience it for ourselves. The chippy, or chip shop, appears to be a neighbourhood installment in England. If you go along the main street of any town, you will see about 5 of them, and there is one in every subdivision. They are little walk-in stores that are either take-away only or mostly take-away but have a few tables for eating in. They have a menu of about 100 items, everything from the standard fish & chips to 20 kinds of kebabs, 15 kinds of curries, 50 types of chinese dishes, and so forth. Because we were going around supper time, there was a very large line – everyone who doesn’t want to eat out or cook is at the chippy buying supper! We got fish and chips and mushy peas, although Fred said that they usually buy the fish and make their own chips since the chip shop chips are quite bad. Strange, but true – they were soggy. I experienced this in Harlow too. But the fish was great and it was a very enjoyable meal.

We were taking the overnight bus to London, which left the station at 11:40 PM so we had some time to kill. They showed us videos of the Liverpool Overhead Railway which is gone now. After that, they saw us off at the bus station, but the ride to London is another story.

Before the Liverpool story ends, there is more to say. First of all, its too bad we didn’t have more time to visit. Apparently we were not that far from the Lake District, which would have been really nice to visit. Also, the story behind the Liver birds is unforgettable. I’m very glad I was able to go and visit some of my family there, and seeing the places my Dad lived in, went to school in and played in was really good. I can just imagine him getting into all sorts of trouble in Sefton Park.

We decided to visit Chester, a nearby town that was a major Roman fort just before Rome pulled out of England. Fred and Lynn gave us a ride to the train station (just down the street) and we took the train into central Liverpool and then switched to the Wirral line to get there. We didn’t realise that different trains ran on the same track and a very friendly lady stopped us from getting on the wrong train and showed us the sign that told what train was coming next. Everyone we encountered was super-friendly and I just adore their accents! So, after an hour or so we arrived in Chester. We walked to the town and easily found the main shopping street. The town still has the Roman walls built around it, which were kept up and improved over the years. The really cool thing is that one can actually walk along the walls all the way around the old town, so we walked along most of it. As soon as we got onto the wall we encountered a used bookstore (with an entrance on the wall – how cool is that??) and I bought a used book and Dan found some old sheet music. He bought Y Gwanwyn, one of the most well known Welsh songs. We continued along the Northeast wall until we came in behind the Cathedral and were tempted to visit, but there was an organ recital going on so we couldn’t have looked around too much and decided to keep going. We came down to the site of the Roman Ampitheatre, which was being excavated by students from the University of Liverpool. They had erected a fence to keep people off the dig site of course. People doing archeological digs always look exhasuted and dirty and this group was no exception. I felt like I was at the zoo where with a cage full of students and a sign that said “do not feed the students”. Anyway, the ampitheatre was really interesting since it had been built and abandoned only 80 years later, and seemed to be very well preseved. Then we walked to the river Dee and relaxed there for a bit. There was a flock of pigeons trlying around the river that were flying in formation and looping around all over the place, as if they wanted to put on a show for us. It reminded me of Manfred in Accelerando. We walked back to the train station, took the train home, and had supper (Lynn prepared a stew for us).

We went to visit another one of my aunts who was married to my uncle Tom (sadly, he passed away of abdominal cancer shortly after they got married). She served us tea and snacks and we had a very nice evening chatting with her. She was a very friendly person and I am glad I finally met her!

We were quite tired from our last day in Paris because we carried all our luggage with us. We ended up sleeping in until almost 10 AM, then had breakfast and chatted with my aunt and uncle a bit. They drove us around the area and then took us to the Albert Docks. We all went on the “Ferry cross the Mersey” ride. I have to say one thing about the Mersey – that is one big river. It makes the St. Laurent (at least near Montreal) look puny, although in Gaspésie I think they are probably about the same. Anyway, this river separates Liverpool from Birkenhead. My Dad’s family lived in Liverpool but I think his oldest sister moved to Birkenhead and he told me about how he would take the ferry across the river to see her. One striking thing is that one sees no bridges across it, at least not by the docks. The reason is obvious – this was THE main port/dock for England on the west coast during the shipping era and the ships couldn’t be obstructed by bridges. So instead of building those bridges that lift up every time a ship comes in or leaves dock, they built tunnels under the river to get from one city to the other. There are ventilation towers built at each end of the two tunnels and these are quite visible in the photos we took. See the close-up (below) too. So, there we were on the Ferry. Unfortunately the ship has two sides and only one commentary, so we ended up on the wrong side of the ship. We were facing Birkenhead, but the commentary was for Liverpool! We still caught a bit of the history though and took plenty of photos.

After, Fred and Lynn left us to explore the Albert Docks. We visited the Museum of Liverpool Life first and got a taste of what this major port city was like. My grandfater used to work on the docks and I think he used to be one of the people who moved the incoming cargo around in the warehouses and docks, so I leared a bit about what that was like. Also there used to be dray horses pulling the carts of goods from the docks to the town. Fred told me about how the kids would nick the cane sugar off these carts. He had a different name for the carts too, but I have forgotten it. We saw a dry dock and then went to the Maritime Museum, which was focused on the ships themselves and the goods traded (including, unfortunately, slaves). There was a room dedicated to the Titanic and other large transatlantic passenger ships. There was also a very interesting display on insurance – the insurance industry was big business in the ‘Pool – imagine importing 1000 tonnes of cane sugar and losing it all in a fire! After this we walked around the docks and got a bit lost. We stopped in a small store and had a D&B and some crisps. We were supposed to meet Lynn and Fred at the “Beatles experience” but got quite lost trying to find it. We never did see any Beatles stuff, but that came later anyway.

We went for supper at “The Carverey” that specializes in roasts. Supper consisted of a choice of any (or all) of roast beef, ham and turkey, Yorkshire pudding, vegetables, and potatoes with lots of gravy. Given that we had been eating quite light in Paris and had not had lunch, we both tucked in with gusto. We both had a pint of a local Bitter and Fred was very surprised that I was able to finish a) all my food and b) an entire pint of bitter. We attempted dessert – a trifle which we both ate since it was too sweet and too much for one person.

We went for a walk in Sefton Park. One of the first things we saw was “Fairy Glen” where children used to claim to find faries. Fred joked that the faries were all downtown liverpool and not in the glen anymore. We saw the Palm house but unfortunately it was closed so we could not go in. We walked along the very large pond and saw some swans and their cygnets and some squeeky ducks things that were totally foreign to us. Then it was home and off to sleep.

A workd about rue Cler: deinfately will not be staying there again. Its a tourist trap. We speak enough French that we don’t need to stay in a neighbourhood where everyone is surprised if you speak French to them. Waay to touristy.

So, we wanted to take in a few more museums before we left Paris. We walked across a bridge near the Eiffel Tower to the 16th arrondisement where we (eventually) found the Wine Museum. It was a very interesting museum with tons of things on display such as the traditional tools used for pressing grapes, barrel-making tools, equipment for testing the quality of the wine, hundreds of different glass bottles, flagons, pitchers and glasses and the patron saint of vinyards (St. Vincent). We learned that the bumps in the bottom of wine bottles are there because in early bottles it added strength, and the same with the ring around the neck of the bottle. The tour included wine tasting which we did after looking at the museum.

We took the metro to Notre Dame so we could visit the Crypte Archeologique which was closed on Monday. They had a very interesting dig of the area under the square infront of the church which dated back to Roman times. We saw a hypnocaust and also some of the items found in the dig (bone pins, bowls, etc).

We walked into the 6th arronsidement again to see the Museé de Moyen Age but after walking around the entire building, discovered it was inexplicably closed! We were not the only ones trying to get in. We had a few hours to kill before going to the airport so we mailed some post cards and went to the Grande Expcerie again for lunch. We had sausage, cheese, pretzels, orange juice and strawberries and ate them in the parc down the street (Babylon of all names).

We went back to Opera metro station and bought another bottle of beaujolais at that wine store, and then caught the Roissybus to the airport. We arrived a bit early and had to wait to check in, which took a long time. We ended up going into the wrong line for security but thankfully it was short and we didn’t end up wasting too much time on that. We didn’t even sit in the boarding lounge as the bus that took us to the plane arrived immediately. The flight was quick and we flew over London (at night time) on the way. We landed at Liverpool’s John Lennon airport where my aunt and uncle met us, then we were off to their place and to bed!

Well by now we knew about the whole “Paris is on vacation thing” but very unfortunately for us we happened to be there on the long weekend that included a national holiday Monday. When we were out on Saturday and Sunday, we noticed ominous signs stating “le magain sera fermé lundi pour la fête nationale” and here we were on holiday monday. Indeed very few things were open. How can you have a hoilday during a holiday??

We went to the Bastille area again for breakfast. As usual, the only places to eat that were open were tourist traps and we almost went to one so we could have a hot breakfast, but changed our minds after sitting at a table and reading the menu. We had learned by this point that the best way to find a boulangerie that was open was to look out for people carrying baguettes and go the direction they were coming from. Sure enough, by using this method, we located a very nice and very open bakery. Stuff was selling fast, so we grabbed a baguette, a chocolate fruit thing and then bought some orange juice at the mini-grocery store across the street. It was quite chilly outside and after we finished eating we had some bad coffee and a very overpriced tourist café.

We walked to the Hôtel de Ville where a beach volleyball game (of all things) was on (it was Paris Plage week). We walked to Place Igor Stravinski where we saw IRCAM where Dan dreams of going to school/working one day. Among other things, they develop a very strange (to me) math-based musical composition software called “OpenMusic”. Dan really wanted to go inside for a tour and at any other time of the year except maybe Christmas this would have been possible but due to the holiday, everything was closed. We were able to get into the lobby but no further. There are some cool sound studios and recording rooms underneath the square outside. Above them is the ugliest fountain I have ever seen in my life.

We walked to l’ilse de la cité and found a nice sweets shop along the way. We bought some caramels, marzipan, and chocolate covered almonds that looked like olives (when Dan tried them later he didn’t like them at all). We walked to Notre Dame cathedral and went inside. There was a noon service on, though, and it was very crowded. We did see some of the naves along the sides that had been painted centuries ago. The line up for going into the towers was really long so we skipped that part. We walked to the next island (Isle St. Louis) and walked to a hip Jazz restaurant for lunch … but it was closed! We walked across Pont Neuf and then into the 6th arrondisement to the Jardins Luxembourg. This was quite pleasant and enjoyable and it was open!

We walked along Montparnasse and tried to find a nice restaurant to eat in, but the only one open (with high recommendations from the guidebook) had “American bar” written on the awning. So that was out. We began to realise that our guidebook seemed to be really aimed at someone who wanted to have the “American in Paris” exprience. We should have bought one written for Quebecers travelling to Paris, it would have been more useful. We knew we would be eating at least part of our supper in our hotel room again and the corkscrew we brought was a piece of crap, so we needed another one. We had searched in vain to find a good and reasonably priced one but did not have any luck as of yet. When we had walked past the “American bar” I noticed a Tabac and suggested we try looking for the corkscrew there. It was open (hooray!) and they did indeed sell them. They had the super fancy Laguiole ones with olive wood handles (and a price tag of about 50 Euros) on display but when we talked to the guy working there he showed us some plain reasonably priced Laguiole stainless steel ones for 8 Euros. We bought it and found out the name for corkscrew in French (“tire-bouchon”).

We found a small grocery store and bought some wine and pasteurized goat cheese (the only option unfortunately), then spent way too long trying to find the “invisible” buildling for the Henri Cartier-Bresson foundation. On the way we got quite lost and ended up in some of the newer arrondisements of Paris, which was an itneresting experience since they were not at all touristy. We took the Metro back to the hotel and were extremely hungry by this point. There was a Chinese restaurant thing across from the hotel and we ate some food there. Most of it was quite good except for the ginger shrimp which was coated in an icky syrupy sauce. In the meantime we started to notice people with baguettes and when I was in line to pay for my food they guy in front of me had a baguette in hand. So I asked him where he bought his and he told me there was a boulangerie just down the street that was open, so I sent Dan off to get some bread before it closed while I paid for supper. The really funny thing is that someone else came by when we were eating, saw out baguette and asked us where we got it! After supper we had the wine and so-so goat cheese with the baguette in the hotel.

Aug 14th: We decided to go to the Louvre since we knew many of the smaller museums would be closed and visiting Notre Dame might be tricky since it was Sunday. We walked near the “steampunk” building (our name for the world’s fair building near to the Louvre) but someone was filming a movie on the bridge (good time to do it when the city is essentially deserted) and we had to go to the next one. We arrived at the pyramid at 9 AM. There was already a very large line-up, but it moved quickly and we had no problems getting through security and buying our tickets. From there it was right to the Sully wing where we started with Near and Middle Eastern relics (Syria, Levant, Bablyon). We saw some cylinder seals and we found the Khorsabad Assyrian temple ruins (one of our main goals). We also saw the Code of Hammurabi. The coloured frescoes from the Ishtar gate were also impressive.

Next we braved the madness of the Egyptian section, which was very small and crowded. We saw the Book of the Dead (it was impossible to take a good photo of it) and many Canopic jars. There were also some very interesting mummified animals and many, many sarcophagi. We ended up in a basement area where some Phoenician relics were on display. This was particuarly interesting because they copied the styles and practices of the cultures they came into contact with (and they met many, being seafarers).

We ended up in the Italian Sculpture Gallery which adjoined the relics, then saw the foundations of the Midieval Louvre. We saw select Roman/Etruscan ruins including some fragments from the temple of Zeus. Lastly we saw some cloth and wood articles from Coptic Egypt. At this time we were hungry and tired (we had been in the Louvre for about 4 hours) and had to stop. So we went out the pyramid and ate some fruit. It was quite cool outside and we were dressed for Montreal summer weather, so we took the metro back to the hotel and had a nap.

We walked to the Eiffel Tower and over a bridge to a posh neighbourhood by the Trocadero. Nothing interesting was open so we took the metro to the Bastille (near the new Opera house) in the 3rd/4th arronsidements. We quite liked the area and found that more things were open. Based on the recommendation of our guidebook, we ended up going to a restaurant called “Le Petit Fer à Cheval” (the horseshoe) which was quite small and populated mostly (but not completely) by Americans. Dan had duck (again) and I had a disappointing veal dish. We shared a bottle of mediocre wine and Dan had another not-so-great espresso. We stopped for really good ice cream on the way back to the metro, and it was delicious. When we returned to the hotel we tried (and failed) to use our phonecard to call home and leave an audioblog.

I am going through my trip journal and posting the hilights from our summer trip over several posts.

We thoroughly cleaned our apartment, packed, and left home at 11:30 AM on Friday Aug 12th. We took the bus to the metro, went to Namur station, and went to Pushap for lunch. It was super-busy there – it is a really popular restaurant. After lunch we got back on the metro and caught the bus to the airport. We got there well in advance of our flight and had lots of time. It was great, since we checked in and went through security at a very relaxed pace. Having flown to the US twice after 2001, I always forget how easy this is to do in any other country. No taking off my shoes or x-raying my luggage!

The flight went fine except that it wasn’t very confortable as usual. Also, although the flight was only about 6 hours long, they showed three movies. What is with that? Don’t they realise people might want to sleep during the flight? Since it was an overnight flight we saw the sun rising over the English and French coastlines – beautiful.

When we arrived we had no problems getting our luggage and after a bit of conflusion, caught the Roissybus to Paris at about 7:30 AM. The driver didn’t want to accept our 50 euro bill as payment at first for the tickets, but finally relented since that was all we had. We arrived at Opera station at about 8 AM and were undecided whether to go to the hotel or walk around a bit. The check-in was not until 3 PM so we had some time to kill. We realised that there was a wine store near the station we wanted to visit and it opened at 10, so we decided to stay in the area until it was open. We quickly found the Obelisk and the Tuleries gardens and were able to take some nice pictures since it was practically deserted at that time of day on a Saturday. We walked to the Seine and sat across from the Musée d’Orsée. It was really, really peaceful and hard to believe we were finally on a trip together!

We walked back to the wine store. It was incredible – the main floor was quite small but then we went into the basement. I am convinced it actually went under the street the store is located on. It was a real cave du vin. There was a very friendly and helpful person working there who helped us pick two bottles of wine – a beaujolais and a bordeaux. The beaujolais was only 8 Euro but was very good (we tried it for supper that evening). We are keeping the bordeaux for next Christmas. Supposedly it goes very well with confit de canard so we will try to make/buy it.

We walked to our hotel and arrived by noon. They let us check in, so we took our luggage up to the room and went back out to explore some more. Unfortunately we soon discovered that the eerie emptiness was not just a side effect of it being Saturday – it happened to be during the national month-long vacation and most of the Parisians had gone to St Tropez and other warmer climes. So unfortunately a lot of the stores we wanted to visit were closed. We tried going to Boulangerie Jean-Luc Poujauran but alas, he was on vacation too. We found another boulangerie and bought a pizza and baguette. Finally we were too tired to stay awake any longer and crashed at the hotel.

We woke up at 4:30 PM and walked past Hotel des Invalides and found the poshest fromagerie in Paris. Unfortunately it was also closed. Fortunately we found something that wasn’t – La grande epicerie de Paris. It was like a department store for gourmet food. The first thing we saw was the dessert counter. Wow. They have a bakery, deli, packed sweets section, butcher, fish counter ready-to-eat counter and a very nice fruit/vegetable section all stocked with incredibly good-looking gourmet food. In the dairy section there was an entire isle that consisted of only yogurt! The good news was that we could get something to eat here (we didn’t fancy eating in the hotel restaurant and everywhere else was closed).

I waited in the very long line at the deli and successfully ordered a duck and pistachio mousse and a salmon aspic in French. The reason I waited in line for so long was that the people working behind the deli counter were really serious about their work. I saw one guy cut some sort of cured beef thing into 6 super-thin slices and it took about 6 minutes. They used only very sharp and professional-looking knives. Also, they have these whole cured legs (of pork I think) there set up on these very fancy carving braces. The upper part of the leg rests on the board while the lower part (i.e. the bone) sits in a little cusp and is held in place by (ready for this?) a bow. There is a person who slices thin bits of it off on demand. Its both disgusting and lovely at the same time. I can’t seem to find a picture of this on the web anywhere though!

Anwyay, we picked up a rather interesting salad, some goat cheese, a pistachio French macaroon and a square of raspberry cake. We brought our gourmet goodies back to the hotel and violated the “do not eat in your room policy” with the Beaujolais wine.

On the way back to the hotel we saw this really strange store that looked like it sold coloured metal spools. Intrigued, we went inside for a closer look. It turns out it was a store that sold one kind of very odd espresso machine made by Krupps. The metal spool things were actually little coffee packets for the machine! We tried a shot – it was ok. We liked the colours of the spools though!