*A second note: I've included the addresses of all of the restaurants in a little index at the bottom, in case you find yourself in Paris anytime soon and want to try these places.
Well I am pleased to inform you that my family's arrival, sojourn, and departure were all relatively calm and without international incident. I know more than a few of you were concerned that my Dad and the French might not get along (or, really the concern was regarding what might happen AFTER they didn't get along), but everything went just fine. I'm going to do this entry journal-style for better ease of reading.
Thursday, December 22
Following lunch we did a little exploring of Notre-Dame, which looked to be a completely different color than the one I remembered from 2009. I think they must have done some massive cleaning and restoration, because I remember it being a dirty, sooty gray, and this time it was a bright, clean tannish-yellow. Even though I've seen lots of French cathedrals, I was still awed (again) by Notre-Dame de Paris. The stained glass is just magnificent -- the rose windows are simply enormous! This would actually be the first of three times I visited Notre-Dame over the next two weeks.
Also, side note: I specified "Notre-Dame de Paris" because it's hardly the only Notre-Dame in France. It's certainly the most famous, but most of the cathedrals are also called Notre-Dame. Why? For those of you who have never taken French before, Notre-Dame translates to "Our Lady." This should give you an idea of how common the name Notre-Dame is, based on how many Catholic churches carry the name "Our Lady."
By this time part of the group was ready for their afternoon nap, so we dropped Mimi C. and Trey off at the hotel and Holly, Mom, and I headed to do some more exploring. We went to St. Eustache, a Romanesque church near Les Halles. Construction on the original Gothic structure began in 1532, but because of a lack of funding it wasn't completed until more than 100 years later, and it opened in 1637. Another fun fact: between 1613-1623, St. Eustache was the parish of St. Vincent de Paul, the man who inspired the charitable organization many years later.
Next we headed back toward our hotel in the first arrondissement (district) and went to the Musée de l'Orangerie, a museum located in what used to be the greenhouse when the Louvre was a royal palace. In the early 20th century it was converted into a museum designed specifically for Monet's giant water lilly paintings. The permanent collection includes lots of impressionist art (many many Renoirs) and this time they had a special exhibit on Spanish painters during that same era.
For dinner we went to a place called Robert & Louise, which brought out the carnivore-oriented entrees on big cutting boards! We ate in the cave (basement) and I thought the restaurant had both a great atmosphere and delicious food.
Friday, December 23
We started off the day right with breakfast at Angelina, who makes the best hot chocolate in the entire world. I have absolutely no hesitation in making such a sweeping statement... And everytime I introduce someone else to the heavenly, bittersweet beverage of the gods, their reaction is the same. You simply have to go. My family first discovered Angelina on accident in 2006 when we took a two-week trip to France with Mimi M. What a wonderful accident! When you do go though, make sure you go relatively early in the day. When we were there for breakfast it wasn't crowded at all, but by noon the line stretches the length of the block. And unfortunately the service was quite poor when I went with Brooke on the 31st. I think that had a lot to do with how many tourists were swarming Paris, but still, for the kind of prices they charge for hot chocolate (7.5 euros, it's a big pot, but still), the service should be friendly.
Next we went to the Musée Rodin, which is located in what was Rodin's house. They have all of the originals of his famous statues (The Thinker, The Kiss, The Gates of Hell), and a lot of other really neat ones. I particularly liked one of two hands called La Cathedrale-- the finger tips are touching to make a shape resembling the vault of a cathedral. Holly wrote her sophomore paper on Rodin's The Thinker, so she was particularly interested in seeing the museum. For lunch we went to a little cafe called Saveurs et Coincidences (recommended by my guidebook, I would pass along the recommendation, my stuffed roasted chicken might have been the best meal of the trip, including all of the foie gras I ate). Then Mom, Trey, Holly, and I went on a guided tour of the Opéra Garnier, which might be my favorite Paris monument. It's just so beautiful! With a quick stop for macarons at Angelina on the way back (not the best I've ever tasted, I would recommend La Durée instead). We had planned to eat dinner at a place called La Puce des Batignolles, recommended by Katie Bowman, but the timing didn't end up working out because we were going to a spectacle (show) at 8pm. So we ended up going to Café Wepler at Place Clichy instead.
Afterwards, Slava's Snowshow. I hesitated to put the show's title in bold in case you might take that for an automatic endorsement, which I would not give. It wasn't horrible, it just wan't what I expected. When I went to Paris with the Dijon program we saw a well-known show called Cirque Plume, which is sort of like a Cirque du Soleil-light. Based on the description I thought Snowshow was going to be in that vein. It wasn't. Or it was, just without all of the cool acrobatics and stunts. Only the strange clowns. As Trey described it, it was very physical humor -- there weren't any words in the whole thing. The most impressive part was the blizzard; they blew what must have been millions of tiny slips of paper out into the audience using some kind of industrial-sized fan, and it really felt like a snowstorm. At the end of the show giant brightly-colored balloons fell from the ceiling (think inflatable beach balls, but ten or twenty times larger) and they just bounced around in the audience. I don't know how they got them back, because we left after they had been bouncing for five or ten minutes.
Saturday, December 24
We started off with the Musée D'Orsay, a museum of mostly 19th and 20th century art located in what used to be the Orsay train station. During WWII the building was used as a hospital. Usually people make a beeline for the Impressionist art on the fifth floor, but I didn't end up making it that far, I got distracted by the wing of art by the Nabis (a group of post-Impressionist avant-garde painters during the 1890s). I had definitely heard of the Nabis before, but I don't know if I'd ever seen any of their works and I found them very interesting, particularly a few by Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, and Paul Serusier. There was also a temporary exhibit on art and design in England during the time of Oscar Wilde, and that was cool too. I think French/European history and art from the mid-19th century through WWI is probably my favorite period -- so many things were changing then and people were
Next was lunch at a place called Chartiers, which was strongly recommended by my guidebook. It was solid, but probably not the best place we've eaten. My favorite part was the baba au rhum that I had for dessert: a mini rum-cake about the size of a cupcake, with lots of whipped cream and extra rum. Yum! Then, we ladies decided to brave the Christmas Eve crowds and check out the big department stores: Galeries Lafayette and Au Printemps. Trey parted ways with us to go check out his favorite composer Maurice Ravel's grave at the Cimetière Levallois-Perret on the northeastern limit of the city. Dad went back for a nap. The stores were beautifully decorated for Christmas, and the crowds weren't even as bad as I had expected (so less than utter mayhem). Mom, Holly, and I each got a pair of shoes and we got to go up on the observation deck of Au Printemps right as the sun was setting. It was breathtaking! No one had ever told me about this observation deck (apparently Galeries Lafayette has one too) and I'm so glad we stumbled across it. I think it's the best view of Paris I've found yet... and the setting sun made it even better!
For dinner that night we ate at Le Restaurant du Rond Point, a restaurant in a theatre recommended to me by Katie Bowman. It was there that I had my favorite dessert of the trip: a pistachio macaron glacé (a macaron with ice cream in the middle). I didn't photograph a lot of food while in Paris with my family, but with this one I couldn't resist. After dinner we went to a candlelit Christmas Eve service at the American Church in Paris, a big church on the Quai d'Orsay. I'm so glad that we did, it was a really lovely service and it made the whole experience feel a lot more like Christmas. When we sang the carols we often did one of the many verses in French, which I thought was a nice touch. Sunday, December 25
Christmas Day!! Normally at home we would open our stockings while all piled on top of Mom and Dad's bed, and open presents downstairs before breakfast, but since we didn't have stockings or lots of presents to open (my family exchanged theirs before they left Cincinnati), we went down for breakfast as usual. That part was a bit strange, but really after that it wasn't quite so different from Christmas at home: we opened presents (mostly me -- I got lots of cold-weather accessories and insisted on trying them all on at the same time), went for a walk, played cards, at a huge meal, and watched the Christmas classics: How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Muppet Christmas Carol, and A Charlie Brown Christmas. Of course, the walk was through the Jardin des Tuileries and down the length of the Champs-Elysees, the card game took place in the breakfast room cave of the hotel, and the big meal was brunch at the Ritz (thanks Dad!), so it wasn't quite the same. But we were all together, which is of course what matters.
Monday, December 26
We took a morning train to Besancon (and I discovered train travel is much more complicated with 6 people and one giant suitcase per person than it is when it's just me and my backpack) and arrived a little after one. After a light lunch, I showed my family around the centre-ville and we picked up some bread for the 5pm aperitif with Steph and Charly. I had already bought all of the cheeses I wanted my family to try, and it turned out we had enough to feed an army. It was great to have my family meet my roommates, and between French and English we managed to have a full conversation. We were already full from the cheese, sausage, pistachios, and 2 bottles of wine (mine plus a pinot gris Charly contributed), but not long after it was time for our 8pm dinner reservation at La Table des Halles. I'm not sure how useful my Besancon restaurant recommendations will be, based on the slim likelihood of you my dear blog reader visiting my humble new hometown anytime soon. But if I was indeed concentrating on these recommendations, this would be one I would make wholeheartedly. All of the restaurants where we ate were recommended by Myriam, a teacher at Ecole Bourgogne who showed me her favorites via a little tour around the centre-ville a week or two before I left to meet my family in Paris. We were pretty tired after dinner and all went to bed.Tuesday, December 27
A late breakfast, then time to do some shopping for presents for people at home (I think I may have gotten a hat, too -- buying clothes intended to keep me warm practically falls in the necessity category, rather than the frivolity category). Then at noon we met Colin for lunch at Chez Ludo. I will freely admit that I was a bit nervous about this lunch -- my dad has carefully cultivated his ability to intimidate my boyfriends/interests/anyone I know, and I as a member of the formermost category, I was concerned for Colin. Of course the whole thing was just fine; we had a good lunch and despite the language barriers were able to chat comfortably. Plus Colin is still alive, and I consider that a plus!
After dinner Trey, Holly and I headed to the Brass (short for brasserie, or bar/pub) to meet up with some people from the Ultimate team who I had invited to join us for drinks. The team came out in full force, and we had a raucous time as usual. I think Trey and Holly now have a better appreciation for how exhausting it can be to socialize in another language. You're probably thinking: come on, how tough can it be to drink a beer with some friends? But when there you're part of a group of 10-12 people having multiple conversations in a bar already fairly noisy with the conversations of others and the music, following what's going on actually takes a bit of effort. I'm so glad they got to meet everyone from the team though!
Wednesday, December 28
Wednesday morning we went to the Musée de l'art et l'archéologie. My family particularly appreciated the ancient Egyptian artifacts, including three incredibly well-preserved mummies. I had seen them before, but for some reason I think more of the cool Roman mosaics than the Egyptian section. After a light lunch at a pizzeria/brasserie near the hotel, we met up with the Coudel family for dessert at Baud (the fancy-schmancy patisserie right by Pont Battant that everyone insisted we try... my tarte citron - lemon tart - was indeed to die for). I think my family was grateful to converse freely in English again and they had a great time getting to know Susan, Emmanuel, and their son Mark, who came along too. But eventually we had to break off the conversation so that my family could catch their train back to Paris. They spent the night at an airport hotel in order to be close for their flight the next morning. Despite the multiple steps required to get back (their train left from the new train station which is a 15-minute drive from the one I live right by, Gare Viotte, they took a train back to the center of Paris and then had to get to the airport), everything went smoothly. They made it safely back to Cincinnati the next day.So overall a great trip. It was really wonderful to see them and to share part of my experience with them. 7 days felt way too short; during college I always had at least a month for winter break. I hope they had as much fun as I did -- I know I was really sad to see them leave!
To see more pictures from my family's visit (136, in fact), click here. FYI these are the same pictures that appear in my Facebook album.
Index of restaurant recommendations in Paris (in the order they appear in the blog):
Café Med: (1ere) 77 Rue St Louis en l'ile, metro stop: Pont Marie
Robert & Louise: (3e) 64 Rue Vieille du Temple, metro stop: Rambuteau
Angelina: (1ere) 226 Rue de Rivoli, metro stop: Tuileries
Saveurs et Coincidences: (9eme) 6 Rue Trévise, metro stop: Grands Boulevards
La Durée Bonaparte: (5eme) 21 Rue Bonaparte, metro stop: Saint-Germain-des-Pres
Café Wepler: (9eme) 14 place de Clichy, metro stop: Place de Clichy
Le Restaurant du Rond Point: (8eme) 2 Avenue Franklin Delano Roosevelt, metro stop: FDR or Champs-Elysees Clemenceau
