Louvre Continued (and more of day three)

Here are some more sculptures from the Louvre. Again, these all appealed to me in some way, and all are drop dead gorgeous.


I actually managed to catch this one with no one in the background. I love the intimacy and intricacy of Psyche and Cupid.



Here is Hermaphroditus, who seems strangely appropriate in this day and age as the lines between genders appear to be blurring all the time. Not physically, necessarily, but emotionally and mentally. For example, the stay at home dad is not the farce Mr. Mom once portrayed. And power business women are not considered a threat to men any more. I think it safe to say gender boundaries have been successfully blurred when you have women like Donna Dubinsky and Carly Fiorina dominating the technology sector for years.

Here is Athena. She has always been one of my favorite Greek deities, as she didn't seem to take crap from anyone and was powerful in her own right. Both Athena and Hermaphroditus were in an area that was supposed banned from taking pictures. But as they were statues, the security guard in the room let me take them.

After we left the Louvre, we headed for the Arc de Triumph. I knew it was big, but didn't realize just how big until we got there. Andra and my dad walked up to the top of the arc, but Suzanne, Mom and I decided to hang out below. I figured that walking to the top of anywhere in the city other than the Eiffel Tower would be pointless, as none of them would offer the view that the tower offered. Here is a picture of the Arc (Notice the trophy wife in the foreground):

After the Arc, we walked back towards the tower/hotel. When we arrived at the tower, we decided now was a good time to go up it. The tower had been closed on a couple of prior walks underneath it due to the high winds. And even with it approved for ascent, it was still really windy on top. Warning! Cheesy tourist photos to follow.


If nothing else, proof we were there. Below is a shot I took from on top of the tower leaning out and looking straight down. Don't they look like ants down there?


After three tourist traps in one day, I was starting to feel pretty done in. All five of us decided to go back to the previous night's restaurant and have more of the same. This time, I had a fish meal and a divine creme brulee for dessert. The food was wonderful yet again, the service was fantastic and all was well.

And finally, the tower at night. The digital noise in this one is pretty bad, but considering it was taken at night without a flash or the use of a tripod, I am happy with how it turned out.


More to follow with all the fun and excitement of day four.

Paris Day Three

Our third day in Paris saw us headed to breakfast as a fivesome. We went back to the same patissirie that we ate at yesterday. I think for everyone but Andra, it was out of a desire to see if the dish breaker from yesterday was still there or not. Thankfully, he was still working, and was actually the only one in the front of the shop. We ordered our meals and sat down to wait for them to be ready. Our coffee was taken care of right away, but the rest of the meal was delivered in fits and starts. Suzanne's sandwich came first, then five minutes later, my father's meal arrived, then my sisters, then mine. My mom's croque monsieur was decidedly missing. Finally, when it appeared that it wasn't going to show up, I walked over to the counter and in my best French, shrugged my shoulders with my hands spread out and said "croque monsieur??" I must have been at least partially fluent, the reaction that was set off certainly suggested I got my point across.

The gentleman immediately looked at me with surprise and said "croque monsieur???" then looked (I am not making this up) as if checking for the croque monsieur directly at the floor. After a thorough scan of the floor, he said "croque monsieur?!?" with a bit more emphasis and started opening drawers. Then he started checking under the papers used to wrap up pastries, then he checked the microwave. All the while muttering "croque monsieur?, croque monsieur?" Finally, he checked the display case where they are normally kept. When he realized this was empty, he called to someone offstage and after a couple of quick sentences that my shrug fluency didn't understand, he said croque monsieur with a big smile on his face and held up one finger. Five minutes later, sure enough, my mom was presented with a freshly made croque monsieur. A couple of things occurred to me during this exchange. The gentleman serving us was definitely a disciple of Jerry Lewis. And either it truly was a stage for performances, or he had to own the restaurant. After a satisfying, if drawn out breakfast, we went back to the hotel to get ready for the Louvre.

We took the water taxi from the Eiffel Tower down to a stop just across from the museum. We could have stopped right outside the museum, but it would have required waiting for the water taxi to complete its entire loop and come back up the other side of the river, so we figured we would get off on our side of the river and walk across. It was really nice and sunny out and the temperature wasn't so high that a nice stroll would be uncomfortable. After about five minutes, all that changed. Much like on our first day, we went from sunny to a vertical tide. Luckily, Suzanne was wearing her trusty Burberry trench coat, so was able to keep our camera dry. I was wearing a jacket, but not a waterproof one and we didn't think to bring an umbrella, so we began a mad dash to get across the river, across the street, and under some trees. My sister gave chase and arrived under the trees shortly after we did. My parents, who had brought my mom's sacrificial umbrella with them, decided to pull the twisted and tortured thing out and try to use it as cover. My mom wasn't quite up to running, so it took her a bit longer to get to the copse of trees we were sheltering under, and when she finally did, voila, the rain stopped. Or at least slowed down to a San Diego rain, which doesn't really count as rain as much as mist. We walked the remainder of the way to the Louvre and entered through one of the back entrances. The building itself is very interesting, with a blend of some great old and new. But the real art is in the building itself. Of course there is the Mona Lisa, not nearly as awe inspiring to me as I might have thought, but what really got me going was the statues. Some amazing sculpture is in that building. Unfortunately, we didn't have three days to see the place inside and out, but I have to say, what I did see I loved every minute of. Here are some pictures:


I wish I could give you a sense of the size of this sculpture. Suffice it to say she is a pretty, big girl. She is also known as the Winged Victory of Samothrace. And for a girl who is more than 2200 years old, she looks fabulous. It is almost unfathomable for me to imagine creating something that would last more than two millennia and still be beautiful and relevant.

And you can't possibly do sculptures in the Louvre without covering Venus. While this is just another picture of her, it was actually something to get to see her in real life. I wanted to kick out all the people in the room so I could get a good shot without background tourists. Oh well, at least you know it isn't a product shot, right?

And speaking of people in photos, these idiots were determined to bogart my photo on this one. Every time I walked around this sculpture to get a different angle, they would wait until I raised the camera to my face and then walk into the frame. If the camera wasn't so expensive, I would have beaten them about the head and face with it. I tried to get a clean shot for about fifteen minutes before my patience ran out. May the sands of time fall in their lunch for all eternity and may all their progeny resemble goats. The sculpture is absolutely beautiful, though. And worth sharing even if it means sharing the idiots in the background. More to follow.

Paris Day Deux Part Deux

After we had been at the cemetary for about an hour, I received a call from my parents saying they had a message from my sister and were going to try and meet up with her at the Notre Dame. So Suzanne and I left the cemetary and got a panini from a street side vendor, then headed for the Notre Dame. As I said previously, we didn't remember our memory cards on the first trip through the cemetary, so we had to go back to the hotel and get them before heading to Notre Dame. We arrived at the cathedral and met up with my parents, then walked through hoping to see Andra. Notre Dame is massive. I could not get over how large the building was, yet it didn't seem to have the seating a church of that size would suggest. We walked around the exterior and looked at all the alcoves where all the statues of the saints are. We didn't go up the tower, but even seeing the interior was breathtaking. Here is a picture from outside Notre Dame (I can't remember if we were allowed to take pictures inside or not, but we didn't really feel it was a tourist trap where that was acceptable).



Alas, no Andra. We decided to go back to the hotel and check and see if she was there. Instead of taking the Metro, though we took a water taxi along the river. Quick comment about the Metro: You don't realize how important good wayfinding is until you come across poorly done wayfinding. The London Underground map is a stroke of pure genius and even the wayfinding signs on the underground make it very easy to figure out where you want to go. Walk up to the diagram, find your station, take that train. The Metro on the other hand, doesn't have all of the stations listed, so you need to know the terminating station for a particular line as well as your own personal destination. This tends to leave you constantly checking to make sure you are on the right train or getting on the the right train.

The water taxi ride was very peaceful and we got an opportunity to see more than just the front of the Notre Dame from a distance. Below is a picture taken from the river.




When we got back to the hotel, we finally found Andra and it was about time to start looking for a place to eat dinner. The previous night's fare had been brie sandwiches all around and we decided that we wanted something a bit more substantial for this meal. So we found a nice little restaurant not too far from the hotel and I had a vat of mussels brought to me for dinner. They had been cooked in a cheese sauce and were absolutely fantastic food. I almost had myself convinced that I was eating healthy too because it was seafood. Almost. Suzanne had a Salmon dish that she also enjoyed a great deal. The service was also excellent despite stories of the French being rude. The walk back to the hotel was late enough that we were again treated to a light show from the tower. Blogger is giving me fits right now, so a picture of that will have to follow.

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Program

OK, there is still more to come on Paris, but I wanted to talk about my breakfast today first. I had the best, most British breakfast I can think of. The English have what they call a full English. This is a fried egg, a rasher of bacon, two sausages, two stewed tomatoes and a helping of baked beans all on the same plate with a side of toast. The baked beans can take some getting used to, but other than that, it is a blissful heart attack on porcelin. The Scottish have their version of a full English, which is egg, square sausages (if you haven't had one, describing them is pointless, but they are heaven) black pudding which is blood sausage, potato scones, which are flat triangles of unleavened potato bread (imagine if tortillas were made from potatoes) and the stewed tomatoes of course. I have had it served with the baked beans as well, but not always. While I love both of these meals, neither is really what I associate with your everyday breakfast in Britain.

My ideal of the typical British breakfast is Egg in a Cup with Soldiers. My Scottish grandparents used to make this for my sister and I when we stayed with them. You take a soft boiled egg and put it in a teacup with butter, salt, and pepper. Take your spoon and mix it all up until you have a nice chunky consistency. Then take two slices of toast (good Scottish whitebread toast) and cut it into strips. These are now your soldiers. You take the soldiers and dip them into the teacup until you get enough on your soldier to get a good mix of egg and bread. Voila! (I know that isn't a British exclamation but oi just didn't seem to fit) the perfect British breakfast. Unfortunately, Grandma wasn't available to complete the ritual. Egg in a Cup and Soldiers doesn't feel quite complete unless Grandma is there to do Stirrup. Stirrup is where she would take the spoon and whip it around the teacup faster than the speed of light and pull out the last of the egg. Before you got to Stirrup, you would swear that cup was bone dry and you didn't have anything for your last soldier. But Grandma would make just enough egg to finish your soldier appear out of thin cup. And when she was done with Stirrup, you could swear that teacup had been washed and dried and was ready to be put away. The ritual is as intricate and important as a Japanese tea ceremony, but tastes better. Maybe next time I get a hankering for Egg in a Cup with Soldiers, I'll take the train up to Yorkshire and get Grandma to help. More on Paris to follow.

Paris Day deux

Tuesday saw the Litzenbergs in a little bit of disarray. No matter how hard we tried (which probably wasn't that hard) we couldn't seem to get our act together. We started the day with no one sure of who was and wasn't going to breakfast. At first, we thought that everyone was going to meet up in an hour after first contact. That turned into an hour and a half with a vague idea that my sister was going to enjoy the opportunity to sleep in. So my parents, my trophy wife, and I all headed off to find some breakfast. After walking for about ten minutes, we settled on a little patisserie that fit the romanticized view of French bakeries. The place had a young woman working behind the counter and a grey haired man in his fifties clearing the tables. As we were ordering, all of us jumped out of our skin as the man dropped what must have been dishes for a 12 course meal. He didn't just drop them all at once in a single crash, it was more of a 10 second waterfall of dishes. After the initial cacophony, he used a table near him to help him lean down and pick up the tray he had dropped. This caused the table lean over and for him to drop even more dishes onto the floor. My dad said he hoped the guy was the owner, because he wasn't likely to have his job long after today. The food was what you would expect from a patisserie. Lots of carbs in a flaky crust. After a sugar rush breakfast and some fabulous coffee, we headed back to the hotel to try and pick up Andra. Unfortunately, Andra assumed that we had left her behind for the day (as I said before, we were all doing a great job of communicating and planning that morning) and was trying to catch us on the river boat tour, as my parents mentioned they wanted to do the tour first. Suzanne and I headed for the most visited graveyard in the world and my parents headed for Notre Dame to try and catch Andra, as she said that is what she wanted to do first. Learning from our mistakes in communication, we left messages for Andra to meet us at Notre Dame (Suzanne and I were going to meet my parents there later) split up to conquer the city. The graveyard Suzanne and I visited is most known for being the burial ground for Jim Morrison of the Doors. Not really a selling point for either me or Suzanne, but it is a fabulous graveyard and well worth the trip. Here are some pictures from Suzanne's camera. Now truth be told, they weren't taken on day deux, they were taken on our last day in Paris. We had to come back to the graveyard, as I was on top of everything on day deux and made sure that I remembered the camera, but didn't bring and memory cards to put in the camera.


This one was particularly interesting to me as I found the optimism genuinely inspiring and the idea of poking fun at death very endearing. Keep in mind, these all come from a graveyard, not a museum. The statues are all exposed to the elements and some gravestones were nothing more than rounded humps with the words long worn away.

This young lady was absolutely beautiful. There is a sorrow in her almost whimsical drawing of the name of the deceased that tugs at my heart. I spent quite a while looking at this tomb and could not stop being amazed at the absolute beauty I saw here.




This tomb seemed designed to fit the description everyone would use for a tomb at the beginning of a horror movie. Everything about the tomb seemed to play on our fears of mortality. If Dickens needed an inspiration for his ghosts of Christmas, here was an easy place to get it.

I'll finish with this one. She looks like she is just waiting patiently for a loved one. A very nice and optimistic sentiment. Waiting for the return of a loved one who has passed on also has a very spiritual significance for me.

Sorry for the delay on these. More to follow soon. I promise.

Saturday, 9 June 2006

As I said in my last post, we went to Paris two weeks ago. The flight was too short to even bother getting the laptop out and start watching a movie. In fact, it felt like we took off, got fed, then landed. Considering my treatment on some U.S. flights, I was amazed at being served food on such a short flight. Suzanne was a bit miffed that she didn't get a stamp in her passport when we went through customs, but was able to survive the trauma. When we left the airport, the sun was shining and all the makings were there for a beautiful day. We waited for the shuttle to the Hilton to arrive and when he showed up, he explained to us that he only went to the Charles de Gualle Hilton, and not the one we were looking for, but that he would be happy to take us to his Hilton which was a short walk to the trainstation. He was wrong, it was a mad dash to the trainstation because as soon as we headed towards the station, it started to rain. OK, it was more like the tide was coming in from the sky, but you get the idea. To add to the fun, the wind was blowing at gale forces directly into us. We arrived with only having to sacrifice one Burberry umbrella to the rain gods.

The trip into the city was relatively uneventful. Although I have to say that while the English have double decker buses, the French have double decker trains. We arrived a short walk from our hotel, right next to the Eiffel Tower. We stayed in the Paris Hilton. I have spent weeks thinking of the appropriate off color remark or pun to make here and figured the imagination of my readers was far better than my own and will leave it at that. The hotel was wonderfully luxurious, though had a suprising lack of a heated towel rack. The heated towel rack is almost synonymous with the modern European bathroom. In typically French style, though, there was a bidet. After getting settled in, we went for a short walk and decided to go under the tower. The winds were too strong to actually go up the tower on our first day, so we left that one for later.

I have to say, Paris is a gorgeous city. More beautiful even than London. The streets are all lined with trees in most of the popular areas and it was suprisingly clean. Of course, we were in the heavily travelled tourist areas rather than the slums, but we live in the middle of tourist central here in London. There don't appear to be as many parks in Paris, but there does seem to be more greenery. We called it an early night and went to bed not too long after sundown. The sun set about 9:30pm while Suzanne, Andra and I were walking back from a grocery store. As we neared the Paris Hilton, the tower lit up with a very Christmas like light display and went on for about fifteen minutes.

Saturday, 03 June, 2006

As Suzanne said, we have been a bit busy lately. On the 16th of May, my sister arrived in London, so we showed her some of the sites we have been enjoying while here. Actually, Suzanne showed her most of the sites, as I was still working during the two days Andra spent in London. All too quickly, Andra was leaving town for more exotic locales, like Wakefield, and my parents were arriving. It is hard to believe that it has been ninth months since we saw them last. In some ways it seems like years since we were in San Diego, and in some ways, it seems like this is just an extended vacation. Friday, 19 May, saw us traveling up to Wakefield as well to celebrate Grandma's 85th. I have to reiterate, I prefer riding trains to flying. As I said in one of my December posts, a train ride is considerably more enjoyable than being stuck in an airplane. We arrived in Wakefield in the evening and went over to the Holiday Inn we were staying at to check in. While we were there we also saw my cousin Donald and Aunt Betty come through. I haven't seen either of them since we were in Glasgow in 2001. Neither looked like they have aged a bit since we saw them last. In fact, everyone looked fabulous. I wish I could say the same for myself.
In the blink of an eye, it was Saturday night and Suzanne was playing paparazzi and taking pictures of anyone and everyone who would sit still long enough for the shot. She got some great photos of the family (we will be posting some soon and sending out the CDs to the appropriate parties shortly). Grandma appeared to be in heaven the whole time, especially when the chef was whispering sweet nothings in her ear and giving her a kiss.
Not unlike a wedding, it was great to see everyone, but it felt like we didn't get to spend enough time with anyone. We left on the Sunday afternoon to head back to London, which ended up being a bit of an adventure. The train ride is two hours. It took us almost five to get back into town. The train broke down just outside of Doncaster and had to wait until a tow train could come and pull us back into the station. An hour + later, we were back in the station and rushing to get onto the next departing train. The new train was, of course, full to the gills, so we ended up standing for a few stops. But once a few passengers left, we were in the plush first class section, which is even better than your usual train ride. However, getting back into town three hours later than you were expecting to is not exactly bliss. The good news is that the tickets will probably end up being half price due to the delays. The next day, we headed off to Paris, which is an adventure that we will post about in the coming days.