Beaucoup photos in the Gimlet Gallery.
Between the Paris Marathon and President Sarkozy’s speech, Sunday promised to be a busy day in the city (translation: closed Metro stops and blocked streets). We woke up early to avoid traffic and get out of the city to spend part of the day touring Versailles.
Beaucoup photos in the Gimlet Gallery.
An active Friday with a normal bedtime seemed to settle most of the jet lag issues, and the group was eager to see more of Paris.
With such a large group of teenagers, there were always concerns about noise level in hotels and restaurants and keeping track of everybody when it was necessary to move as one group from place to place. Generally the students didn’t have to be reminded too often to keep the noise down. We only lost one student on the Metro when he missed our stop, but he was able to get off on the next stop and catch the return Metro back to where we were waiting for him. Those of us who were new to the Paris Metro system were delighted with how easy and quick it was to use.
For more photos, visit the photo album in the Gimlet Gallery.
Exploring Paris, Provence and the Riviera in nine days feels like jumping on a moving carousel, so perhaps the best way to describe the experience is to post a dizzying array of images. Hang on!
After a direct flight from Seattle, we arrived in Paris early Friday morning. Our hotel, the Mercure Paris Raspail Montparnasse, was located in a convenient Left Bank location on the edge of the 14th and 6th arrondissements. The rooms were basic, but quiet and comfortable, and included excellent free WiFi service and a complimentary breakfast.
(Word of advice: when traveling in a group of 43 people, most of whom are teenagers, breakfast early to ensure that one of the precious few pain au chocolat finds its way to your plate.)
But the hotel’s location was its most outstanding feature. Two Metro stops (Vavin and Edgar Quinet) were within easy walking distance, or those up to a good, brisk walk could find plenty of nearby sights, shops, and cafes to explore.
A brisk walk was exactly the remedy for coping with jet lag and our tour guide, Angelique, led us past the Fontaine de l’Observatoire into the Jardin du Luxembourg …
While we’re recovering from jet lag, returning to the real world, and organizing memories and thoughts for a proper trip report, here’s an appetizer: a miniature version of the HostelBookers Seven Super Shots game. The game is played by showcasing seven of your best travel photos from a range of themes. Here are seven of my favorite photos from France:
This category has to be the iconic Paris photo: the Eiffel Tower at night. On our first night in Paris, our tour guide, the indomitable and incomparable Angelique, led a sunset excursion to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, where we would have a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower’s night show. At 9:00 pm, “the lady puts on her evening dress”, created by ten thousand sparkling white lights. What a magical end to a long day of travel, and an inspiring beginning to our trip.
When Thing One visited Paris for the first time two years ago, he chose to take several photos of pigeons, and we expressed some regret that his camera contained so many pigeon photos, and so few monuments, or people, or … anything else besides pigeons, really. This year Thing One decided to take even more pigeon photos as a running joke. It should have been no surprise that while I was photographing gargoyles on Notre Dame, a pigeon photobombed my shoot. Mettez un oiseau sur ça!
The perched village of Les Baux in Provence is a windswept, rocky treasure trove: tiny jewelboxes of shops tucked away into the walls, sheltering cafes, and narrow, winding streets. Where do they lead to? And when can I return to explore them?
We toured another perched village, Eze, on the French Riviera. After the steep climb to the top, we were rewarded by the spectacular view of the Mediterranean Sea and the Côte d’Azur. One of the students in our group was resting on the wall, taking in the scenery and enjoying some quiet meditative time.
On a trip to France, this category has to be a photograph of dessert, bien sûr! After a lovely dinner at our hotel in Nîmes, this raspberry-praline picture of perfection awaited us.
We spent one morning on an overall drive around the major sights of Paris, and as our tour bus, along with many others, crept slowly through the Louvre courtyard, a group of rental bicycles rode past us. I leaned against the window and snapped this shot of an older couple, still full of vitality and romance, as their shared journey takes them through this beautiful city.
This eagle’s nest view of Eze on the French Riviera captures for me the dizzying heights, twists and turns of the coastline, the color palette and overall beauty of the region.
Those are my seven super shots from this trip! A full report to follow …
Paris was not originally on my list of must-see places in my lifetime. I didn’t study French in school; in fact, my education avoided any mention of Things French which might have made the country, language, or culture even remotely interesting. It wasn’t until Thing One found himself in a beginning French class in junior high school, and the teacher repeatedly informed us, “You know, your son really has a gift for the language,” that we began looking for and focusing on French topics that would interest him.
When he entered high school and we learned about the French Department’s Spring Break excursions to France, held every other year, it felt like a natural next step toward encouraging his talent. By the time the second opportunity came around, Francophile fever had spread through the family. Initially it seemed impossible for anybody to accompany Thing One on this trip, but several prohibiting circumstances changed with just enough time for Hå and me to join him.
It’s generally understood and accepted that having children changes a parent’s life, but often we expect those changes to be inconvenient or involving sacrifice on the part of the parent. We don’t always think of the ways in which a child’s interests and strengths can improve our own lives, taking us in new, better directions we had never considered.
I’ve been visiting a few blogs to develop a sense of place and gather ideas:
With the countdown complete, all that remains to say is … Allons-y!
Less than thirty days until our upcoming adventure, and I’m gathering the essentials:
Packing light is a goal (to leave room for all those souvenir macarons, bien sûr) but that philosophy doesn’t extend to leaving the iDevices empty. I’ve been experimenting with using the iPad as a travel tool and will continue to do so on our upcoming France trip as time permits. So far, the camera connection kit has worked very well for uploading photos and storing them in Dropbox. WordPress’ blogging app is okay, not great; the desktop interface is more visually oriented and thus quicker and easier to use, but I can code to fine tune the formatting as necessary. I’d like more control over adjusting the image sizes as well; while I can edit my photos with Adobe’s Photoshop Touch, it would be more convenient to have all my blog post editing tools in one place, as they are in the desktop WordPress Dashboard. We’ll see how it goes!
A few of the apps I’ve chosen for the journey:
On the subject of e-readers, I have several e-reader apps loaded on my iPad but mostly use Stanza, Kindle, and iBooks. I’m also glad to see more magazines catching the clue that paper subscribers won’t pay their subscription fee twice for mobile access, so mobile device versions of many magazines are becoming available. The tablet editions of my favorite magazines will be a welcome diversion when I’ve finished reading the emergency card, in-flight magazine, and catalog.
To quote Amelia Earhart, “When a great adventure is offered, you don’t refuse it.”
Accompanying three dozen teenagers on a spring break trip to France may not be everybody’s idea of a great adventure, but it’s the one I’ve been offered! Hå rejoins us as a senior team member and grandmother-at-large as needed. The itinerary includes Paris (with lodgings on the Left Bank); Versailles; a trip on the TGV to Provence where we will stay in Nîmes for a few days; and we’ll finish up the adventure with a little sunshine in Nice.
Editor’s note: The Gimlet’s friend mentioned in the story below recently celebrated an Eagle Court of Honor for his own Thing One (congratulations!), and while searching for pictures for his ceremony, these photos were found. And no, they haven’t been run through some fancy Photoshop filter or iPhone app: these photographs are genuinely old.
Back in the summer of 1984, I was an 18 year-old who had finished one year of college (one quarter at USU and one semester at UNM), and was waiting to go on an LDS mission. My friend and his parents let me stay at his home while I worked at the same Shell gas station I had worked at during high school. I remember taking all my earnings, buying ten white shirts, and having very little money left after that. I also remember my father reading my mission call to me over the phone from our new home in Albuquerque to me while I was at my grandparents’ condo in Thousand Oaks, CA.
I also remember my grandfather being convinced that my cousin and I were going to do something risky and get ourselves killed just before we went on our missions. My cousin planned to go on a white water rafting trip, but that is another story. As for me, my friend and I went to Idaho to have my uncle guide us on a climb of the Finger of Fate, which Mountain Project.com describes as a “ridiculously cool looking granite spire in the Hell Roaring Lake area” of the Sawtooth mountain range. The previous summer, the three of us had successfully summited the Grand Teton.
My memories of the climb are mixture of vague and unbelievably clear. I vaguely remember the drive to the trail head in my father’s 1981 VW Scirocco (which was soon replaced with a 1984 Scirocco after I left on my mission) I do not remember how close this was to my August 9, 1984 report date to the MTC. I remember the trail and the beautiful peak we were going to climb.
Most vivid though is the memory of my uncle not being able to make the last move on the climb to get to the top of the peak. He is not a big man and his arms were not long enough to reach.
Then I remember my attempt.
I got to the peak and put my arm across the top. The cliff on the other side was about 1000 feet. I imagined myself pulling myself over the entire peak and going over the other side. With that thought, I realized I physically could not force myself to make the move. At that point I realized in spite of all my dreaming and working toward becoming a great alpinist, I did not have the drive or recklessness to put my life on the line any farther.
I remember my arm across the rock and the look across the top of the peak, but I could not quite get there. My friend couldn’t make it, either.
We climbed down the mountain without summiting and you can tell from our expressions on this last photo that we were disappointed.
At that time, I might have believed that I was done with mountains, but mountains weren’t done with me. After my mission (nicknamed “The Mountaintop Mission“), I returned to Idaho, and with my uncle, I climbed the Middle and South Tetons. Later I summited law school, but in retrospect I often wonder if I should have kept up with mountains of granite, ice and snow. Now, to steal a thought from Timothy Egan, I live in a city where (on a clear day) I can look around me and see three national parks at one time: Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic.
Links for fellow armchair mountaineers:
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