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.
Click to view slide show from Thing One's Paris trip (Quicktime, 22MB)
This is just a sampling of the many, many photos Thing One was able to take before his camera broke. Visit the Gimlet Gallery for your own virtual tour through the City of Lights and the Loire Valley.
To get to Paris we had to fly on two planes. The first flight was from Seattle to Atlanta, and from Atlanta we flew to Paris. We left Seattle at noon on the 25th, and when we arrived in Paris it was about 9:30 am on the morning of the 26th. We stayed in the Hotel Princesse Caroline which is in the 17th arrondissement and very close to the Arc de Triomphe.
After unpacking, we toured the Champs Élysées. I had lunch at a place called Pomme De Pain. Then we rode Le Metro to Montmarte to see the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur.
There were lots of street performers there and we saw lots of tourists falling for a trick: a guy would come up to a tourist with a piece of string and ask him if he wanted to see a trick, then tie the string on the tourist’s wrist. When the tourist couldn’t get the string off his wrist, the guy would make the tourist pay for his string.
On the way, we went past Moulin Rouge (which is very different from the Red Mill at home), and also past Les Deux Moulins, where Amélie was filmed. We rode the Metro back to our hotel and ate dinner at the restaurant Chez Clément.
Saturday was divided between a bus tour around Paris and exploring the city on our own.
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