Less Famous Glimpses of Paris

We certainly filled our days in Paris with the most famous of sites.  There really are just so many famous places there that, in four days, it's hard to move on to anything else.  

But, in contrast to the more classic Madeline views, we thought we would try and provide some views of Paris that are not so ultimately familiar.

Looking up the Eiffel Tower from the 2nd deck.

These two in the subway chairs.  Ben loved them to the point of we wouldn't sit in them for just a couple minutes, because he was apt to cry when leaving them.

This is from in front of Sacre Coeur.  We had been told that there were a bunch of street performers there, and there were.  This guy was the best.  He was juggling a soccer ball on the concrete platform below.  Very impressive by itself.  Then he started spinning the ball on a little pen, stuck it in his mouth, climbed the lamp post, and swung from the light, with the spinning soccer ball outstretched with a great view of Paris at dusk behind him.  Click on it to enlarge.

If you asked the kids for the highlights, they would probably mention quacking at the ducks here.

Or maybe playing in the nearby playground in Luxembourg Gardens.

 This is looking out of Musee d'Orsay at the Louvre, on the opposite side of the Seine.

 The immensity of the Louvre was staggering despite expecting it to be huge.  This was looking out a window of one wing, looking at the other wing.

Notre Dame Cathedral turns 850 years old next year.  I think my favorite part of the exterior is the endless statues.  Here, above the doorway, there are just rows and rows of statues.  Do we know who they all are? Is it lost to history somewhere?

On a few of the bridges across the Seine, people take a lock, bind it to the bridge, and toss the key into the river, generally as a sign of undying love for someone.  This was the most lock-encrusted.

In this case, the rainbow came right before the rain.  The Hotel de Ville, under the rainbow on the left, was 2 minutes walk from our place.

Thanks to Nicholas Cage and National Treasure 2, I knew that there was more than one Statue of Liberty. We saw 3 in Paris alone.  I think this one didn't really count, because it was a model, but I think it's been here in Luxembourg Garden since the early 1800s.

From inside the Louvre pyramid.

I guess this is pretty famous, but Saint Chapelle's stain glass really was breathtaking.

Given the soft spot in my heart for buskers, I thought it was great when 3 accordions and a sax boarded our train for Versailles and started playing.

Our Travel Map from Last Year

I went to the trouble of making this map a couple months ago, so I figured I should post it.  This is our year in the US, at least the major travel points.  The red is plane flights.  The black is our boat to Alaska.  Whoa.

(click to enlarge)

(by the way, this is our 600th post on this blog)

Madeline's Paris

Well, we're back from our little foray to Paris.  It was a good and tiring time, and we'll probably put up a couple of posts on it.  For a general perusal of some of the famous sites of Paris that you probably already know, I thought we could do it through the eyes of Madeline.

To try and prep Maggie for this trip, we would read her copy of Madeline and point out some of the places that we were going to see.  Other people have done this kind of thing on the web already, but here you go:

First off, the cover shot, with the Eiffel Tower, the one Maggie was most excited to see.

It was blustery, but we did go all the way to the top.

Place de la Concorde is actually on the inset in the front of the first Madeline book, but I couldn't find a copy of that one, so this illustration is one of the later books.

And here, our photo of the same.

 "Invalides", or what Maggie calls "The Golden Dome".  I guess this was a home for wounded soldiers.  In Madeline, this is where the girls were "sometimes very sad".

We didn't have time to go into the courtyard, but we walked around it, while waiting for the Rodin museum to open.

Luxembourg Gardens: The girls took their walk "in rain or shine"

This is us sitting by the pool, with the same mansion behind us.  The kids loved the ducks as well as the nearby playground.

Maggie chasing the pigeons.

 Notre Dame is where the girls go walking "in rain"

This is the closest en face shot that we have.

Tuileries Garden, between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde, is where Miss Clavel decides that it's a fine day to visit Madeline.  You can see the Louvre in the background with its big arch.

Here's the Louvre from the other side of the arch.  We didn't take a lot of pictures in the gardens, because...

 ...we were doing this instead.

 

Sacre Coeur, in the background here, really is beautiful.  "Madeline loved winter, snow, and ice."

Thankfully, no ice for us, but rather a carousel, Maggie's absolute favorite.  Ben went on too, but just wanted to keep switching animals.

Place Vendrome is where the girls "frown at the bad". 

 And the thief knew what he was doing, since these shops are expensive.  Rachel found earrings starting at 13,000 Euros.  I saw diamond skeleton Halloween earrings.  Really?

Coq au Vin

We just finished a meal that was surprisingly good.  I mean, really good. Surprising for at least two reasons.  First, we had made coq au vin a few years ago in Michigan with a slow-cooker recipe and it was notably underwhelming.  Second, when I decided to try again tonight, based on the stuff in our fridge, I just read a couple recipes online, and then winged it for somewhere in the middle.  That kind of thing doesn't usually go so well for me.  

But this was delicious, and so I wanted to write down the recipe and thought I might as well post it here, for my own reference, and anyone else that is curious.

1.  Saute in a big saucepan with olive oil:  1-2 chicken breasts (cubed) and 4-5 fresh mushrooms (sliced) for a few minutes until browned.  Also with 3 medium cloves of garlic, some salt and pepper, and some "Herbs de Provence".  (I would guess Italian seasoning would also do the trick, but I'm sure French food people would kill me for saying so.)

2.  After a few minutes, add:  2 carrots (sliced and peeled) and 1.5-2 fresh tomatoes (diced).  Simmer for about 5 minutes.

3.  Add 1/2 cup red wine.  We had a Cote du Rhone on hand.  I also added about 5 fresh basil leaves, torn into smallish pieces.  Simmer for 20 minutes.

4.  Add 1 cup of chicken stock or bullion equivalent.  I also added about 1-2 tablespoons of flour to thicken it.  I have no idea if that did anything.  Simmer for 15 more minutes, then serve.  It was really yummy.

BREAD:

I happened to match it really nicely with an ad hoc bread.  It was an herb focaccia.  I made it using the 5-minute artisan bread recipe (boule recipe with herbs mixed into the dough) that we have posted on before.   I pressed it flat and after 30-minutes of rising, I used my fingers to press divots in it, basted some olive oil over the top, and sprinkled Herbs de Provence, garlic powder, and salt.  Also yummy.

Bon Appetit.

Un Petit Voyage a Chambery

We're a bit behind on our little excursions, but a few weeks ago, we took the train to the closest biggish city to our own, namely Chambery, capital of the Savoie department, which is where we live (akin to a small state, or maybe a big county).  Two of our friends from our training this past spring in Colorado are studying French there, in preparation for work in Burkina Faso, and we were glad for a chance to visit them.

Mostly, the kids were glad to get to ride the train, as seen below.

 We have had an uncanny number of rainy days on the days that we are not in school and this was one of them.  However, after a lovely lunch at Don and Janet's apartment, we took a little tour of the city.  The old town is very cool and here is some of the towers and the chapel of the old castle of the Duke of Savoie.

The small walking spaces of old Europe are probably my favorite feature, because they speak of a time before cars and highways.  However, they are notoriously difficulty to photograph with any satisfaction.  Maggie is in this picture to give a little feel for how narrow the street is.

This little timbered "covered bridge" crosses the walking street.  I guess Chambery used to have a lot of these, but they were largely removed as a fire hazard, but this one has remained.  The city is an odd mix of old juxtaposed with new, and it sounds like much of this is due to damage from WWII, with new buildings built where old ones were bombed.

A well-known feature of the town is this fountain with four elephants.  When it's on, water comes out the trunks of the elephants.  Apparently, it commemorates Hannibal crossing the Alps with elephants, but I don't know more of the story than that.  There was a carousel adjacent on which Maggie took a ride with great delight.

Maggie with Don and Janet.  Thankfully, Ben napped right up until the time for our return trip.

And lastly, a bit of graffiti as a brief commentary on modern french religious belief:

"Hiking the Mountain" with the Kids

On Wednesdays, there is no school in France.  I guess this is nationwide.  Maggie doesn't go to school, and as our Centre follows the public system (so as to allow us to take care of our kids), we don't have class.  So we generally split the day, with one of us taking the kids in the morning while the other studies, and vice versa in the afternoon.

This past Wednesday, the first activity of the morning was taking a "hike up the mountain".  About 5-10 minutes behind our house, there is a hill with a shrine of Mary and Jesus at the top.  It's called "Chapelle Notre Dame de Vignes," which I love.  Our Lady of the Vines.  How appropriate.  You have to walk through the adjacent nursing home parking lot to get to the top, but it is just high enough to have a great view of the city.  You can see the statue from our house, and so Maggie was excited to get up to it.  She did great and walked the whole way.  Ben walked until the steepest part at the end.  Here are some picture from the top.

This is a view looking over our house toward the opposite valley we see out our window.  In the bottom left, a little up the hill is the old medieval town of Conflans, and you can see it's chateau just below it (maybe, if you click on it to enlarge it).

I texted Rachel from the top, and she leaned out the window and waved, and Maggie could see her, which was fun.

 Coming back down, Ben graciously allowed a moment sans pacifier for a photo.

A bit of fun with French

Every language has their fun points, and most speakers of said language are probably unaware of them.  Here's a few from French thus far:

1.  Pourboire:  I don't know the etymology of this word, but it is the word for "a tip", i.e. what you leave a server (if you leave one at all here in Europe).  It's a compound word:  For-drink.  I can imagine two possibilities:  The first is that you are leaving a pourboire as a thanks "for your drink".  The second is that you are leaving a little something for the server to have a drink later on.

2.  Pain Perdu:  I had actually seen this at Mimi's, the yummy breakfast place near Rachel's mom's in Arizona.  It's the french word for French toast.  I mean, it can't be "french toast" to the french, right?  It literally means "the lost bread", meaning that you usually make pain perdu out of the old stale bread that has been otherwise lost.  A nice little redemption picture, really.

3.  Love, as in the tennis score:  During Wimbledon, I was reading a bit on the origins of tennis.  It's actually an old game, and is thought to have originated in France.  The scoring of "love-15-30-40" is a bit lost in legend, but the most feasible explanation for "love" (i.e. a score of zero) is the french word l'oeuf. (which actually sounds quite similar...)  It means "the egg", or as we might say, "a big goose-egg."

Life...Goals

It's funny how some life goals come about.  These days people talk about a bucket list.  I wonder if they just choose things at random for their list, or if there is meaning behind each item.  I'm sure if I had made a list at age 20 it would have looked much different than a potential list I would make today.  For example, 50 states.  I got to accomplish that lovely goal last May, but before meeting Eric I doubt it was much on my radar.  Seven continents are probably on the list, too, but not every single country in the world.  Too many countries, not enough time, other things I'd rather do.

Anyways, after we had Ben in Kenya in 2011, Eric and I started joking about how we could have each of our children in different countries...no wait, different continents!  The more we talked about it, the more realistic it seemed, since about 2 yrs after Ben's birth would put us in France, around the right time to have baby #3.  I hate to say it was our good planning, because I really think instead it's God's good providence, but ....

April 9, 2013.  Goal (soon to be) attained.  Probably no more kids after this because really, when are we going to find ourselves in Asia/South America/Australia/Antarctica?