French Museums, or "We're Racking Up Life Points!"

Third entry in a series of posts about vacay in Europe

Continuing on from London, we took the Eurostar across the Channel to explore Paris. When we arrived, it was drizzling and gloomy, so we decided to make the best of the situation and headed to the Louvre.

The Louvre is an enormous building, and definitely the largest art museum I have ever stepped foot in. Here, you can see one side of the Louvre, photographed from the other side, with the landscaped glass atrium in the center.

We immediately set off for the Mona Lisa, but en route, a museum security guard suddenly waved us back. "S'il vous plaît, nous avons cherché un objet suspicieux." They had found a suspicious object and we weren't allowed to proceed any further. I checked to make sure that I hadn't dropped my bag somewhere unattended.

Foiled, we next set off to find the Venus de Milo. I am still unsure as to the artistic significance of this statue (she looks like pretty much any other classical Greek statue I've seen), but I'm not about to question.

The Code of Hammurabi is a large stone tablet inscribed with one of the world's first legal codes. One of the more frustrating aspects about the Louvre was that the majority of the information was given in French (naturally), which meant that non-speakers were out of luck if they wanted to know more about the work on display. The Code of Hammurabi was written out in French, and I did my best to translate its contents for Megan and Matt. Almost every rule went something along the lines of "If ____, then he shall be put to death."

A stained glass window in the medieval section, it is here that Megan and Matt said their wedding vows. Unfortunately, this "relationship" would end about 48 hours after that.

The throne of Napoleon III, I was surprised at how small it was, especially when paired with the showy carpet before it.

Another meta photo of us taking photos in front of a mirror

At the end of the afternoon, we went back to look for the Mona Lisa once more, et voilà. After fighting the crowd, I managed to reach the front and snapped a picture of my favorite eyebrow-less girl in the world.

The famed glass pyramid outside of the Louvre

The Place de la Concorde, a gold-capped obelisk gifted to France by the Egyptian government. Though the name suggests otherwise, this was actually the site of many executions, where the guillotine was located during the Reign of Terror.

Paris is filled with dozens of monuments, museums and palaces that are "must-sees," at least once in your life. With that in mind, I felt a keen pressure to check off all the major sights in Paris like some sort of scavenger hunt, as though my trip would be cheapened if I returned without seeing X. In an ambitious itinerary, we declared the next day to be "Monument Day," and traversed much of central Paris, trying to score as many Life Points as possible.

We started out at the Arc de Triomphe, located in the center of the craziest rotary I have ever seen (topping the 9-entrance rotary in E. Longmeadow). With several unmarked lanes of traffic zipping by at high speeds, I am not sure how accidents do not happen every hour here. To reach the center and view the underside of the Arc de Triomphe, there are tunnels underground that traverse the square. Unfortunately you have to pay €7 or so to surface, and we weren't in the mood for that. You can see the Eiffel Tower in the background on the right.

The Eiffel Tower is an elegant, iron structure constructed for Paris' 1889 World's Fair. It is repainted on average every 7 years to prevent rusting.

To reach the top, you could take the lift or the stairs. After pondering the relative lengths of the lines, we opted to take the significantly faster and cheaper stairs (a mere €3,50 for students). This allows you access to the first two étages of the tower, which was plenty high for me to view Paris. The stairs were also a much-needed chance to get some exercise. Though there were many of them, we all agreed that taking the stairs wasn't terribly draining, so I would definitely recommend it unless you're elderly. And, on the way down, the lift is free.

The Musée Rodin comprises a large collection of Rodin's works, including his infamous "Le Penseur," or the Thinker. For only €1, we were granted admission to the garden, which features a dozen or so of his sculptures on display amidst roses and fountains. The Thinker statue was teeming with tourists vying to take photos in the Thinker-pose; I was evidently not above this. Elsewhere in the garden is Rodin's "La Porte de l'Enfer," or the Gates of Hell.

A shot of a sculpture centered in a pond, with Megan taking a photo of the same. You can see the gold-capped dome of the Palace des Invalides in the background, where Napoleon's Tomb is located.

Outside of the Musée Rodin, we were greeted with our first French protest! Now, I know that I have truly experienced the cultural flavor of France. The police had blockaded the street, so we weren't able to approach the protestors to find out what they were fired up about. I did some googling afterwards, which revealed that they may have been upset about the price of milk.

We made our way to the Île de la Cité to view the Gothic splendor that is Notre Dame.

A closer look at the detailed masonry in the center. Here, as with all of Paris' other tourist attractions, we were accosted by people begging for money.

Afterward, we decided to take a break at Shakespeare & Co, a famous English-language bookstore in Paris. This was a very cute shop, the only store I've seen which tops Hyde Park's Seminary bookstore for books crammed/square foot. Their top floor features hundreds of old books available for browsing, not for sale, and seating for you to lounge and take in the musty scents as the sun sets outside over the Seine.

The sign outside of Shakespeare & Co. is appropriately poetic.

The Sacré-Cœur basilica, another area teeming with vendors selling chintzy items and panhandling beggars, juxtaposed with a beautiful building. The basilica is located at the summit of the butte of Montmartre, the highest point in the City (unless you count the top of the Eiffel Tower). To reach the top of the summit, you can take the funicular (free with our Mobilis train passes) or the stairs (according to Matt, who lost his train pass, this was no worse than hiking up Libe Slope). We were able to tour the inside of the basilica for free, and a service (in French!) was taking place simultaneously.

For dinner, we went to Le Refuge des Fondues (per Katherine's recommendation). This is admittedly a bit of a tourist trap (when we arrived, all the guests were speaking American English), but heck, we are tourists after all. The restaurant offers an €18 prix-fixe menu of apéritif, a cheese, salami & olive appetizer tray, cheese or meat fondue (Megan couldn't handle dealing with the bubbling oil to save her life), and wine served in a baby bottle. Yes, a baby bottle. Apparently, there is some sort of additional tax if you serve wine in glasses, so the owner has taken to serving it out of baby bottles instead. This is probably for the best anyway, because spacing in the restaurant is extremely tight (to be seated against the wall, you must step over the table), and the baby bottles are adept at preventing further spills. On the wall behind Matt, you can see a myriad of colorful currencies, signed by visitors all over the world.

Elsewhere in Montmartre, the area is known for being "bohemian" and also for its plethora of sex shops. Walking down the Boulevard de Clichy, we saw store after store with titillating offerings, something that would certainly offend American zoning proprieties. The famed Moulin Rouge cabaret is located here; unfortunately the entry prices are somewhere in the triple-digits, so we definitely passed.

Continuing down the street, we stumbled across the Musée de l'Érotisme. After Megan posed outside of the fat Bhudda statue, we decided to hop on the low-brow museum train and go inside.

This chair is prominently on display in the window, and does pretty much what you would expect it to. The rest of the museum's collection contains mostly artwork with accentuated body parts, from a variety of cultures and time periods. Not that I fancy myself a connoiseur of sex museums, but I would recommend NYC's Museum of Sex over this one.

Megan and Matt plop down for a break in a pair of leopard print heel chairs.

The next day, we decided to trek to Versailles, an over-the-top, extravagantly ostentatious homage to the power of Louis XIV. To get here, you must take a commuter train on line C about 20 minutes outside of Paris. Simple enough, non? It turns out that the C train has a number of branches, and after querying some other passengers, we realized that we were on a train headed somewhere other than Versailles. After we noticed our mistake, several other passengers who had overheard the conversation leapt up to ask, "Wait, did you say this was not the train to Versailles? Can we follow you?" All of the sudden, we were responsible for leading an Indonesian family and some other passengers to Versailles.

Once we boarded another train, the Indonesian family proceeded to plop down next to us, and strike up a conversation. Correction: it was mostly the dad who was interested in talking to us, with Mom making occasional comments and Angsty Teen Daughter sullenly sitting in a corner with her iPod on, hating life and making no effort to engage with us. After we said that we were recent college graduates, Dad whispered to his daughter, "These kids graduated from college, you should talk to them!" Daughter's response was to blatantly ignore him and turn up her music. Afterward, we discussed how all of us would have killed to have parents who took us on paid international vacations, and how the daughter would later regret how unappreciative she was as a youth. Though, Megan admitted that when she was 15 her parents took her to see the Grand Canyon, and all she wanted to do was go home and hang out with her friends. Ah well, c'est la vie.

After successfully arriving in Versailles, we approached the palace. Though it was an overcast day, the golden gates still shimmered in the distance. Engraved above the columns is the message: "À toutes les gloires de la France."

The Château de Versailles is filled with hundreds of paintings, mostly commemorating royal family members and other nobles. I didn't take a single picture of a monarch, but I did snap this all-important photo of Blaise Pascal. I also made sure to photograph the statue of L'Hôpital. Go mathematicians!

This painting covers the entirety of the ceiling in the Hercules Drawing Room, a work of breathtaking proportions.

This is the king's bedchamber, where King Louis XIV died in 1715. Each day, elaborate ceremonies would accompany his waking ("Lever du Roi") and going to bed ("Coucher du Roi"), with a formal procedure and order outlined for the people designated to see him.

Here we are inside the famed Hall of Mirrors, a long passageway outfitted with arched mirrors and chandeliers.

A formal garden viewed from the inside of Versailles. We didn't have the time or energy to explore beyond the palace, but the grounds cover an additional 800 hectacres, much of it perfectly landscaped in French Garden style.

London Attractions, or "Definitely Punk Scene"

This is the second in a series of posts about the MCLU trip to Europe.

Between the three of us, we probably took over a thousand pictures on this trip. I'll eventually post more of these on Facebook, but the London highlights are here.

We started off with the Tower of London, an old royal palace and military fortress. It also houses the crown jewels and served as a site for prominent executions, including several wives of Henry VIII. Here, you see the exterior and a trebuchet demonstration with some festive-looking tents. The grassy area is actually a filled-in moat. As our tour guide told us, this area used to be teeming with mud, raw sewage and polar bears. Yes, polar bears. The Royal Menagerie here included exotic animals, though the unfortunate polar bears died of typhoid soon after arrival.

Our Yeoman Warder tour guide, Bill Callaghan, was a hoot to listen to. He regaled us with tales of past executions, medieval history, and jokes about the French. Luckily, for those of you not traveling to London in the near future, his tour has been posted on Youtube. Now, if only he would confirm my Facebook friend request. :(

A memorial with a glass pillow marks the spot where the scaffold and executioner's block used to be, where Anne Boleyn and others met their demises.

Tower Bridge is quite beautiful, unlike its more famous counterpart, London Bridge. I actually didn't even bother taking any pictures of the latter, since it was so underwhelming.

We made an obligatory trip to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard. I am still unclear as to what guards are changing where, but the highlight was the royal marching band, pictured here in concert formation behind Buckingham Gate. They regaled us with (rather staid) renditions of Hairspray's "You Can't Stop the Beat," Ricky Martin's "Livin' La Vida Loca," and Enrique Inglesias' "Bailamos."

Westminster Abbey, where Isaac Newton, many major poets and other luminaries were buried.

Here you can see Big Ben, the London Eye in the background, and part of the House of Parliament.

Camden Market, an alternative neighborhood catering to punk, goth and Lolita clienteles. Further north is a series of Camden Locke markets, a maze of stalls selling everything from spiral lightbulbs to books on how to tell if your dog is gay.

Some of the more typical pedestrians seen strolling through Camden Market; I only wish I'd brought my fishnets with me to London.

I was highly, highly amused by these purses, which are constructed from a single zipper and can be unwound and rewound freely. It was just quirky enough for me to splurge on; I think this is the first time I've ever bought a purse. I also snagged a pair of green hemp pants for merely £10. Just call me Ithaca.

All of Britain's major museums are free to enter, which wins them significant bonus points in my book. I decided we needed to see the Tate Modern, since I've never gone to a museum focusing solely on modern art, and the Brits tend to have broad ideas on what constitutes modern art. Alas, we did not see anything involving elephant dung, but here is a photo of the three of us in front of a series of animal mirror panels.

I am looking nonchalant in front of pink cows in the Warhol room.

St. Paul's Cathedral--this is pretty much the best photo I took the entire trip, if only because Matt forgot his camera on that day. Conveniently, there was a letterbox located in an adjacent park, marking the first international letterbox I have found.

The British Museum is a history museum and collection of items from Britain's colonial exploits. Here, you can see many artifacts from ancient Egypt and friezes from the exterior of the Parthenon (which the Greek government is demanding to have sent back to Athens).

The famed Rosetta Stone. I hadn't realized that there were actually not two, but three languages written on this stone: hieroglyphs, Demotic (ancient Egyptian), and classical Greek.

Elsewhere on the must-see London tour, Matt and I stopped by a game shop called Playing Games. This was the most comprehensive gaming shop I've ever seen, with all manner of board, strategy and roleplaying games. The clerks were also super knowledgeable, and took the time to introduce us to a couple specifically London games. The first was a card game called Crunch, themed around the financial crisis, and the second was called War on Terror, featuring a politically incorrect map similar to Risk. Both are produced out of Cambridge.

Here is an ominous warning to all those who might be tempted to shoplift from the store.


Matt and Megan outside the Globe Theatre; we managed to score last minute tickets for As You Like It for only £5. Unfortunately, these were also standing tickets, which meant my feet were rather unhappy by the end of the show. The show was extremely entertaining though, with burning torches, live music, and a dance spectacle at the conclusion. If only we had put this much effort into our dramatic readings in high school english class.

Standing in the pit provided an up-close view of the stage; you could almost touch the actors and in fact, many of them walked through the crowds when they entered scenes or tumbled off the stage during fights. Still, after a long day of walking, I would have much preferred the comfort of a galley seat.

The Shakespeare Globe Theatre balcony orchestra included a sousaphone, drum, trombone, crotales and marimba, among other instruments. I am not sure how historically accurate this is, but it was definitely fun to hear.

Clueless Americans, Faux Pas, or "Guess Who's Lost As Shit?"

This is the first in a series of posts on the MCLU (Megan, Matt, Me) trip to Europe.

Being sophisticated international travelers (I'd never been outside North America), we opted to start our travels off in London, where the locals at least speak English, and we wouldn't have any trouble understanding them. Sure, there are foreign peculiarities that arise in British English, but having read Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island, I at least knew that a counterpane was a bedspread. Which is why I was mildly perturbed when I had some trouble ordering in restaurants.

(at a diner)
Me: Is this cheese sandwich hot?
Waitress: No, it's cold.
Me: Could we make it hot? Like grilled cheese?
Waitress: ...Grilled?
Me: Um, toasted? On both sides? With cheese in the middle?

(at an Irish pub)
Bartender: Would yeh liek ennehthang else?
Me: Would I like an L? [confused stare]
Bartender: Would you. Like. Ennehthang. Else?
Me: Would I...oh! No, thanks. [hastily hands over a colorful non-green bill]
Bartender: Erm...we don't take euros.
Me: Oh, so sorry!
Bartender: Yeh just stepped off the plane, didn't yeh?
Megan: [whispers] Fresh off the plane!

For the most part though, I navigated the British mangling of the English language just fine. Matt, on the other hand, couldn't seem to get people to understand his New Jersey.

Matt: Could I get the mint chocolate chip?
Ice cream vendor: You wanted strawberry?

Matt: Can I get two one-pound lemonades?
Vendor: [hands him two cans of lemonade]

Pity. Well, so long as we don't open our mouths, we blend in perfectly, yes? This is why we were constantly offered unsolicited help. Be it at Barbican Hall for a London Symphony concert or at the Eurostar station, an attendant would approach our friendly flock and proceed to give directions to the American newbs. I was most impressed with the speed at which we were singled out at King's Cross. "Looking for Platform 9 and 3/4?" asked a conductor. "Right this way around the corner!"


Then there were the times when we were actually lost. For one afternoon, we decided to have an independent exploration period, since Matt wanted to see the London Zoo, Megan wanted to see the Freud Museum, and I had no interest in seeing either of those and planned to look for kayaking in Regent Park instead. I was a tad concerned about Megan's lack of directional sense, but she seemed confident enough. So, armed with a book of maps, Megan gamely set off on her half-hour walk to the Freud Museum. Matt and I browsed a record store, took a leak, then began strolling toward Regent Park, whereupon we found a frustrated Megan standing on the corner, fuming "Guess who's lost as shit??" I literally began to ROFL. Several passerbyers began to rubberneck.

All this, however, was topped by our scenic excursion to the East End. We wanted to check out Brick Lane, the Indian-Bangladeshi district on the outskirts of Central London, located in what might be called a more adventurous terrain for tourists. According to the Fodor's guidebook, the Bethnal Green tube stop alighted right at Brick Lane. After surfacing though, a second glance at the map revealed that two Bethnal Green stops were marked on the map, and we were a ways away from the correct one. No matter, it was a fine day for a promenade through the East End, and we had no qualms about taking pictures as a couple BMWs driven by Pakistani drug warlords passed us by.

Later, we noticed that Fodor's warned against traveling through the Bethnal Green and Whitechapel neighborhoods, warning that "muggings are a frequent occurence in daytime" and "tourists should be on their guard." It is a good thing that Matt (toting a camera bag) looks like he'd be tough in a fight.

Less you think we were completely helpless, I shall point out that I managed to give directions in Paris to a tourist looking for Hemmingway's old cafe. And, while looking for the train to Versailles, we inadvertently ended up leading a small group of Indonesian tourists to the correct train.

Hopefully these contributions helped make up for the time that we were admonished with "Silence, silence!" while in our Paris hotel room. I swear, these were the thinnest walls I've ever seen.

Hey, Remember that Time...?

My mom and I did some cleaning today, sorting through old files and trying to throw things out and mostly failing. Amidst the detritus of yellowed receipts and cobwebs, Mom uncovered things like my hospital bill from 1985 and my dad's journal from his first few years in America. The segment that most neatly wraps up my dad: "1979. We are living in a boarding house with 6 other families, and it is always terribly noisy. More than anything else, I wish I had my own study so that I can read in peace. I am determined to make enough money so that my kids can have rooms of their own."

Elsewhere in the department of things I had no idea about: apparently, my dad used to be a champion ping-pong player back in high school. Sadly, I have yet to see him demonstrate this prowess at ping-pong.

Upon reflection, I myself was a pack rat/budding archivist from an early age. I'm not sure if this is normal, but I kept meticulous files all throughout childhood with stuff that I thought was interesting or significant: 1st grade report cards, math awards, ticket stubs, my sticker collection, a long Starburst wrapper chain, a Jigglypuff gummy snack from a crush, a piece of the wall from Meyzeek Middle School that I took when I graduated...I have at least 5 boxes in the basement simply labeled "Memories."

Today, I rediscovered a few old photo albums that I'd stored and completely forgotten about once digital cameras came into fashion. Since digitization is FTW, I started scanning some of the photos for kicks and giggles. Here are the fruits of my labour:

Me, blissfully unaware at age 3 that this outfit is totally stereotypical

Chester and me, circa 1994. At this point, I hated dresses, lace and anything pink. I assure you, my smile here cloaks a simmering rage at the domination of adults.

Standing in front of the White House in 6th grade or so

Chester, cracking a lot of eggs

8th grade--Is it bad that I still have this shirt?

As much as I hated having my picture taken while growing up, I have to say that looking at old family photos was hilarious.

Quote of the day:
"I was talking to my tai chi master, and he asked if I was religious. I said, well I believe religion is best suited for extremely wise people, or extremely stupid people. I fall somewhere in the middle, so no." -Mom

Reason #238 Why Being Home Rocks

I consider myself a pretty good home cook, but there's nothing like getting home and being welcomed by a ginormous bowl of bún riêu, or rice vermicelli with crab. This is usually done with a spicy seafood broth, and my mom shelled a dozen crabs for this, so it's extremely flavorful. In this cannot-be-bought-in-restaurants rendition, you can see huge hunks of crab meat, accompanied by tomato, bean sprouts, lettuce, mint and thai basil.