this is cool luggage
Things to do in Paris when you are not dead
PLEASE NOTE: I wrote this back before the EURO took over, so I don’t have cost approximations anymore… I think it was about a 1.5 FF=1$ conversion then. Happy Paris-ing!
Whether you are backpacking around or just on a regular vacation, here’s my list of things to do:
- Buy a liter of Evian and carry it around in your bag (see the packing list for details) to drink. Cokes cost 25-50 FF ($5-$10) each. Think about that when you order drinks. Outside of a cafe or restaurant, you will want to drink the water and get carryout food to eat in a park or walking along.
- Buy a carnet (10 Metro tix) and use the Metro to get to the farthest point out, then walk back to your hotel. It will be worth the walk back. You will see so many more things than you would if you just took the Metro everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, the Metro is incredibly efficient and all that, but sometimes, the goodies aren’t on the main streets or in the guidebooks.
- Go to any cafe and order coffee (say this: “Du cafe, s’il vous plait.”), its actually espresso, but drink as much of it as you can. That way you’ll have a nice buzz and the world will seem to move slow, thus extending your vacation time. If you just can’t take the espresso route order the cafe crème, which is more like cafe au lait here.
- Catacombs (Metro: Denfert Rochereau) It will take you about 3 hours to walk all the way through the catacombs and longer if you decide to really look around you. Check in your guidebook when the catacombs are closed, like all the other museums they are closed one or two days during the week. If you are sensitive to ghosts this may not be the best place to go.
- Au Pied des Cochons, near St. Eustache cathedral (Metro: Les Halles)
is a restaurant that I adore! They love to hear about how wonderful their food is and the chef will basically treat you like royalty even if you speak only English. Most places will sort of do this, but this place I really think they deserve the praise. Carpaccio is wonderful if the have it on the menu still. - Eiffel Tower(Metro: Bir Hakeim),
but do yourself a favor and walk across one of the bridges to get to the tower. Its really big. Yes, its cool looking, but the thing that always strikes me is that its soooo biiiiggg. Underneath the tower itself are hot dog vendors. Buy one and get the homemade spicy mustard. Then, go back and get another one. - After you have eaten too many hot dogs, sandwiches niçoises, sandwiches au jambon et beurre on baguettes, then it is time for crepes. My favorite is the one with Nutella (a hazelnut chocolate spread.) but you can get different toppings.Most vendors of food on the street have wonderful food and MUCH cheaper than restaurants. Good for the daytime eating. At night go to a cafe on the street that has “menus prix fixes.” Eat outside on the sidewalk tables.
- Musée D’Orsay (Impressionism and more modern art) (Metro: Musee D’Orsay) has my favorite paintings in the whole world: “Les Raboteurs du Parquet” Gustave Caillebotte, “La Charmeuses de Serpent” Henri Rousseau and the sculpture by Degas “La Petite Danseuse” Orsay is an old railroad station recently converted into a museum. Look around at the architecture as well as the art.
- Cluny Museum (medieval art)(Metro: Cluny La Sorbonne)
- Louvre basement
with base of old chateau in the North wing…I can’t remember which wing that is, Richelieu, I believe. The Louvre is worth several walk throughs. Go one day and nose around. Leave for lunch, rest, then go back (your ticket will let you back in for the day) Then a few days or a week later go back and concentrate on the areas you really want to look at.
Don’t try to see everything and avoid the French painter’s wing if you value your sanity. - Luxembourg gardens (Metro: Luxembourg)
was near one of my old stomping grounds in the 5th arrondissement. Its gorgeous. Go there and look around the grounds, don’t miss the bee keepers hut near the west entrance and then go sit in the center near the fountain and people watch. - Pantheon (Metro: Luxembourg) is also in the 5th, just up Rue Soufflot. Go out of the East entrance of the Luxembourg gardens and then walk straight up the street.
- Pigalle (Metro: Pigalle), the red light district, is cool during the day, but at night you’ll have more propositions that the Legislature after a reformist movement. Anyone and anything will proposition you, then your husband/wife after you say no…they really don’t care. If its transvestites you are wanting to see, go to the Bois de Boulogne after dark and just watch as the entire cast of La Cage au Folles seems to seep out of the woodwork. Its really cool!
- Arc de Triomphe (Metro: Charles de Gaulle Etoile) is the absolute largest tribute to one’s own ego I have ever seen. Napoleon really loved himself. Another good place to go is…
- Les Invalides and the musée de guerre (Metro: Ecole Militaire). This is where Nappy is entombed. A very large monument to a very short man. The real attractions here are the gold covered dome (beautiful on a sunny day with those Paris blue skies), the Musée de Guerre inside the back wings of Invalides with suits of armor form the middle ages… ) and finally the Rodin museum out in the open air. Acid rain and all.
- Picasso museum (Metro: 3rd arrondissement, I believe.?.) Need I say more?
I really must win the lottery…
Sydney Love Travel Log Wheeled Duffel especially since I drool over this kind of thing.
Though they really need to make this about twice as big as it is and it would be perfect.
Maybe I should just design luggage.
A Walk in the Woods
Every time I listen to (or read) Bill Bryson’s book about the Appalachian Trail, A Walk in the Woods, I get the strange idea of walking some of it.
It isn’t really about being with nature or all the walking… or even about a challenge. I think I’m more excited about all that self sufficiency and, to a lesser extent about all that luscious camping equipment.
And although a city dweller friend of mine mentioned off-handedly that he was ‘rusticating’ and that camping with me held some appeal… I think that the Appalachian Trail would be slightly beyond the pale of his camping limits.
And just for the record, Bill Bryson when he discussed the… erm… more daunting sections of the trail and said (and I’m paraphrasing here) ‘If Daniel Boone, who wrestled bears and then dated their sisters, was afraid of (this bit of wilderness) then I should be, too’ I fall in love with this book all over again.
packing
I don’t know why, but I really addicted to this particular pack of Burt’s Bees lotions. It just seems to make me feel better if I’m out or on a trip (plus I like the fact that I can refill them.)
I need to redo my little travel list. I used to have a little card (passport size) that I listed out all the things I needed to remember for any given trip.
Depending on the length of the trip, you’d take a bit fewer of the listed item or more if it was a longer trip.
Now, I mostly have several suitcases/bags/backpacks in varying stages of readiness to add whatever favorite tshirt, sweatshirt or pants that I am addicted to at the moment and then run out the door for places unknown.
It used to happen a lot more than it does now.
Even a 2 day trip makes me happy.
…and packing for a week long trip amuses me regardless of whether I’m going or not. If I’m in a funk, you’ll most likely find me in my room, bunny on the bed, packing a suitcase full of stuff for some imaginary trip.
I get almost giddy in the travel bottles section in a drugstore… I’m such a cheap date.
I can’t figure out if that’s endearing or just really sad. =;P
[REVIEW] Pattern Recognition
Pattern Recognition (Unabridged)
Author: William Gibson
Narrator: Shelly Frasier
Unabridged Fiction
Audio Length: 10 hours and 7 min.
I actually read this book before I got it on Audible (and I still have it on my bookshelf in hardback).
I’ve read a bunch of good and bad reviews (they seem to be polarized-its either really good or really bad) and I can identify with most of their points. Yes, there are plot holes, yes there are issues that normally wouldn’t magically work themselves out like they do here and some splintering of the story takes place with characters that normally would have been more important… normally, I say, because your average novelist follows an established framework.
Gibson does not.
His splinter characters do contribute to the mood, and to the aura of Cayce and her unreal labors. It worked for me.
But, continuing in its defense, there are also avalanches of words that are beautifully written (the first paragraph knocked my sock off); their reading hypnotic. On a personal level, there were so many references that trigger things which instantly made me sympathetic to this book and Cayce.
The whole discussion of jetlag resonates with me and my own travels. Cayce continues to deal with her father’s disappearance in the Sept. 11 attacks, and while I am far removed from New York, I have special people in New York City who’s loss would have simply devastated me. So many little coalescences that make me sympathetic to this character.
Publisher’s Summary:
Cayce Pollard is an expensive, spookily intuitive market-research consultant. In London on a job, she is offered a secret assignment: to investigate some intriguing snippets of video that have been appearing on the Internet. An entire subculture of people is obsessed with these bits of footage, and anybody who can create that kind of brand loyalty would be a gold mine for Cayce’s client. But when her borrowed apartment is burgled and her computer hacked, she realizes there’s more to this project than she had expected.
Still, Cayce is her father’s daughter, and the danger makes her stubborn. Win Pollard, ex-security expert, probably ex-CIA, took a taxi in the direction of the World Trade Center on September 11 one year ago, and is presumed dead. Win taught Cayce a bit about the way agents work. She is still numb at his loss, and, as much for him as for any other reason, she refuses to give up this newly weird job, which will take her to Tokyo and on to Russia. With help and betrayal from equally unlikely quarters, Cayce will follow the trail of the mysterious film to its source, and in the process will learn something about her father’s life and death.
2003 William Gibson; (P)2004 Tantor Media, Inc.
ST MARTIN ’02: Day 4
Tuesday: We spent most of Tuesday resting. It is a vacation after all. We lazed around, watched telly and, every once in a while, we’d look out over the view of Dawn Beach. J&R headed off to do some stuff, Daiv and I stayed at the resort for some downtime-24 hour other people isn’t our thing. We do well together since we aren’t attached at the hip, but when we are around other people *all the time*, we get a bit cranky-well, more than a bit. We walked the long arduous 2 minutes to the beach and stayed in the water bobbing in the waves and watching the afternoon clouds turn dark.
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The Caribbean is an interesting place. There are lots of people who are just sailing around the islands, expats who spend their time coasting around soaking up the sunshine and living what probably is a pirate’s life… its probably not as romanticized as that, but I admire the nomadic lifestyle.
We had reservations at Citrus later on that night. Its a fairly new restaurant on the island. I think its geared toward New Yorker’s and Californian foodies-evident in the decor- but the food ROCKS. I had the tasting menu that included oysters, a bit of game hen on ‘forbidden rice’ with pate, venison and a chocolate cake. I refrained from licking the plate, but that was a hard won battle. WONDERFUL food.
ST MARTIN ’02: Day 3
Monday: Monday! Things are open on Mondays. We headed in the counter clockwise direction again and went to The Talk of the Town in Grand Case for lunch. This little restaurant, called a lolo, has bbq chicken, ribs, shrimpies and fish (though the shrimpies left a lot to be desired) the bbq barnyard variety animals were pretty dang good. Lolo’s are apparently the way to go in St. Maarten/St. Martin. They are fairly cheap and don’t have tons of obnoxious tourists lolling around eating up the good food.
After lunch we moved on over to Marigot to see what they were like when they were actually open for business. None of the towns on the French side are very big. A few streets and many junk stores interspersed with obscenely expensive jewelry stores (I don’t understand the allure of all those badly designed rings and necklaces-except maybe resale value…not my style anyway. And those Lladro statues are tasteless. Yarg.) We dropped by to get another brioche and headed off to finish the circuit of the island.
It seems that we’re only allowed to go in one direction around the island…heh.
We stopped in Phillipsburg to get a week’s worth of dialup access, the web is rather popular around here. I counted about 3 or 4 internet companies here just roving around the island. That’s promising. Even Kentucky Fried, a major player here on the island, has a website (www.KFC-SXM.com). That I simply find surreal.
We wandered up and down Front street (the local row of shops for the cruise ships when they drop by for a visit) and found a tshirt for me, a sweatshirt that I couldn’t even conceive of wearing at that point, but intellectually I knew I’d wear it back home and some miscellaneous stuff to remind us of the trip. The Phillipsburg Liquor Company was the final destination for the day. The rums around here are cheap and plentiful. They range from sickly sweet (www.guavaberry.com) to the amazing RumJumbie. I’m not a big rum fan, but that stuff smells pretty dang good.
We trundled home after an exhausting day and decided to drop by another place recommended to us by a pal of a pal. The shack next door to a swanky, and rather lame restaurant, had great food and cheap beer for happy hour. We sweated out of every pore for about an hour and a half before we left. The little bar is the hangout for the local yahties and you have to trust the locals.
We decided to go swimming after the sauna of a meal and watched the stars come up over the lights on the horizon from St. Bart’s.
Mmmmm…beautimous.
ST MARTIN ’02: Day 2
Sunday: We woke up and made coffee (necessary) got our collective acts together (only took 2 hours for 4 people-not bad) and got in the car to scope the island. We worked in the counter clockwise direction. Orient Bay is the local nude beach, though it was sparsely populated, and is completely beautiful. The sand is soft and fine. Apparently other islands’ sand isn’t so perfect and require Aqua Socks or the like to walk along the beach and shore.
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Grand Case is the next town along the way. It is what I think of when I think of a Caribbean vacation; brightly colored housed, narrow streets, a preponderance of tourists on scooters coming home after the morning shopping for fresh food. I’d probably try to stay there if I came back to this island.
Marigot, further along the Northwest side of the island, is a small French city. I felt like I was in a small French town when I saw the street signs, French traffic notes and the green cross denoting a pharmacy. I instantly homed in on a patisserie and nearly swooned when I had my first bite of a real pain au chocolat in about 3 years. A brioche and cafe creme later, I was fortified enough to get back in the car and ride back down into the Dutch part of the island and Phillipsburg again. One more pass at the supermarket to pick up some DIVINE Nutella gelato locally made (as well as other flavors-alas, they were out of the chocolate that we sampled the day before-but I can understand why there’s a chronic shortage of it.)
We played on Dawn beach in the afternoon and later on that night tested the hot tub at the resort’s pool area. It wasn’t hot, but it was warm enough to hang around for an hour or so before being ready for sleep.