le Baguette

Sometimes stereotypes exist for a reason.  And watching Montpellier's denizens queue up for baguettes on Sunday morning lent proof to the French nation's love for bread.  Baguettes down the street, baguettes on bicycle, baguettes en masse.

I was that creeper trying to take discrete photos on my iPhone:

the queue for the baguette

 

 just a little walk home with baguette

yellow trousers, tucking into his baguette on the way home

 

bulldog waiting for baguette

                                                   Cradle your baguette like a baby

 

baguette from the market

 

armful of baguettes

 

baguette on bicycle

 

Who can blame the French?  They make bloody good bread--inexplicably crunchy yet soft and delicious.  So good I couldn't resist.  

Avilas in Paris

Paris is a place steeped in mystery and romance, rightly so, depending on the day.  As long as I can remember, my sister has had an obsession with the city going as far as decorating her room in Parisian theme.  So when my sister, mom and dad booked their flights to come visit me in London, I introduced the mystique of Eurostar--a two point five hour city centre to city centre train service ferrying tourists between the alternate universes of London and Paris.  

I've been to Paris quite a few times now and am a bit cynical.  It's beautiful, don't get me wrong.  But my inner city dweller needs a bit more to be impressed by than national monuments swarming with tourists in trainers videoing their every step.  Alas, watching my sister's face light up at the Eiffel Tower, my mom practically running to see Notre Dame and having to drag my dad out of the Louvre was an altogether worthwhile experience.  

Notre Dame in sepia tones 

 

Locks on the chain bridge 

 

On the metro, as I kneed a small Indian man with dry, cracked hands who'd rubbed his groin area up against Jaclyn's leg, I quickly learned that my sister attracts more than her fair share of creepers.  And there's a lot of creepers in Paris.  In fact, and I say this with experience, we were overcome with rude Parisians who pushed, jostled and yelled at their fellow man.  

 

 Onwards we went.  We sort of stopped at Sainte Chappelle, a beautiful chapel just a stone's throw from Notre Dame.  I say we sort of stopped because none of us wanted to pay the 8 euro entrance fee to see a church 1/10th the size of Notre Dame, which was free to get into.  So Paul, wielding his youthful age and EU passport accessed the chapel for free and snapped a load of photos.  The rest of us sat on a bench wondering why eight vans of riot police were assembling just in front of us.  We never really found out.

 Instead we made our way slowly to the Eiffel Tower where my mom snapped roughly 300 photos and my sister tried to position both herself and the tower into a range of selfies--an arduous task.  We opted not to wait in the 2-hour-long queue and made the slow walk away from the tower when it spontaneously burst into twinkly fairy lights.  Jac was underwhelmed: 'it cheapens it, don't you think?'

This is when my dad saved the day with this:

We headed back to our hotel in probably-convenient-if-you've-flown Montparnasse, right next to the catacombs, a series of underground vaults with the skeletons of millions of ancient Parisians.  It's been on my list of venues to see for some time and, yet again, we missed it.  Alas, Hotel du Midi Montparnasse was a welcome home away from home.  It probably wasn't best for a short weekend hop due to its location far away from Eurostar but we had a balcony overlooking some part of the city and the surrounding area was delightful.  I introduced my family to the boulangerie, fromagerie, poissonerie.  Everything sounds cuter in French.

Our day two was much of the same.  I walked my parents to exhaustion, fended off the creepers and found a boulangerie to end all boulangeries.  We also took the boat before ending up in Montmartre, the little artisty enclave that provides all kinds of delights:

 

All in all, I'm certain my family enjoyed Paris but I'm not sure if was what they expected.  As for me, I'll go back but who needs the tourist spots when you can wander an antiques market, people watch whilst same-side-sitting and eat all the cheese your stomach will allow.

Paris (the second day)

One day of glorious weekend sushine was enough to ask for on a late November weekend, thus we were greeted with horizontal rain and gale force winds upon wakeup at St Christopher's Inn on a lazy Paris Sunday. We didn't care. Paris is Paris! and when you're travelling with reunited americans, the Europe is Europe! attitude takes over. I can't explain it but it's something like Europhilia on triple espressos. I'm not complaining; I led the pack.


We'd finished off the night before at a cozy and grafittied, specialising in Sangria, student bar called 'Le 10 Bar', on rue d'la Odeon, somewhere in Paris's boho Quartier Latin. The quarter is a mess of cobbled, narrow streets and tiny pavements. V. cool. But with the sangria going straight to our heads, we stumbled home and made a less than early start the next day.

at Marché aux Puces de St-Ouen...lots of dead animals, funky smells, avante garde street performers and interesting clothing choices


After waiting out the rain with extra large hot chocolates and various tastes of market fayre, we marched endlessly towards le tour eiffel, taking a series of ridiculous photos.



The beauty of travelling with very-good-at-what-they-enjoy amateur photgraphers, is that you see places in a totally different light. Lights, angles, viewpoints all begin to throw themselves in front of you. I was actually excited to see the Eiffel Tower for the third time in my life.

That, and seeing Nasim's face when the hunkering tower of metal snuck into the skyline was pretty priceless.


beauty in a reflection in a puddle
and then this

After our highly nutritious dinner of Bastardy, crisps and fromage, I left Nasim and Jason at the hostel to return back to London reality. It would be romanticly american to say that I gazed longingly out past the french countryside, sideways beret clad composing poetry about the delightful weekend I had.
In reality, I passed out as soon as train wheels hit the track and woke up abruptly at St. Pancras station.

Paris! (day one)

I'm not sure why i've posted an exclamation mark next to the title of this entry. Paris and I are not intimately acquainted with one another. I don't consider myself a parisophile (i'm sure there's a word for this). But this funny thing happened when Nasim, her friend Jason and I ventured for a weekend away at the end of November.

I started to see its appeal.

And maybe it was eurostar, the delightful city centre to city centre high speed train that takes you from Kings Cross St Pancras to Gar de Norde in 2.4 hours--that's barely a nap. Or maybe it was Montmartre. Or maybe it was the rekindling of emotions and memories of study abroad days long gone by.

The last time I was in Paris I got something of an authentic experience by staying with Elodie, my good friend from my Edinburgh days. In fact, my blog's birth documented that trip as my first on this here blog space. Those were the days of bad formatting and no captions. And now, it seems i've come full circle. So maybe it's got very little to do with Paris and more to do with being a grown-up, whatever that is.

Regardless, the three of us eurostarred it in arriving late on friday night and I came back sans travelling companions late sunday night in order to get back to that slog I call work. Nothing remarkable happened. But it was europe. Real, live, people are not speaking english europe.

We ate. We drank. We got lost.
And since Nasim and Jason had never been before, we did every single i'm a tourist walking in paris thing known to man. Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Eiffel tower again, walks on the Seine, crepes, Montmatre, etc. I tried to be super cool with my pink fuji camera sandwiched between my photographically clad friends with multiple zoom lensed Canons. I am happy to admit that my photos don't look so bad.

Montmartre
I've finally figured out how to simultaneously pronounce both r sounds in this city borough. It's expensive. It's touristy, artisty and bohemian. my favourite!






Notre Dame




Along the River
something french, salmony and delightful
restaurants on the touristy left bank
Shakespeare and Company, an amazing, albiet expensive, english bookstore near Notre dame

Chain Bridge


day two to come!

Montaigne and the Market

but not together. on our last French night and day, we spent copious amounts of time getting to intimately love french cuisine. Not that it took that much convincing. This included a jaunt down to the local restaurant that had two choices on its chalkboard menu, both of which infused garlic into the seams of every ounce of sauce, included a delightful potage and three massive courses all for the delightful price of 15 euro.

I learned how to decapitate dead prawns soaked in garlic. Believe me, I was doing them a favour.

And then we sauntered back to Michele de Montaigne's chateaux and vineyard to take a look at one of chuck's personal heroes. He was underwhelmed, but I was pretty overwhelmed--my knowledge of chateaux relate back to the Charlie Brown days where Snoopy gets adopted (stolen?) by a French girl and Charlie Brown has to trek across the world to save his beloved beagle, falling in deep smit with Frenchy along the way. There was eerie music and dark lighting--the movie put me off big french houses for years!



these people are so my height

And then suddenly it was time to go back to England, put the sunny weather and funny speakers behind us to get on with the last six weeks of the school year. But since nothing is quite straightforward when we travel, we actually had to propel ourselves eight hours in the Peugot northwards to catch a mega early morning ferry. This involved the market...
with its purchases of cheese
olives
wine
and one very french hat


and several twirls around the roundabouts of greater Renne, Nantes, et al. and a late night encounter with the French equivalent to the Super 8 Motel. They played Scrubs dubbed in French in the lobby; Le Super 8 gained my instant approval.

With only minor stress and a much more comfortable cabin this time, we hit the high seas and napped our way across them. And we may have fit in one more bottle of St. Emilion and a salad nicoise for good measure. But who can blame us?