Leaving London to the Last

We tried to close out Paris with a visit to Pére Lachaise Cemetery before heading to the train station to ride through the Chunnel, but rain foiled our attempts.  We saw a bit, but the two tiny umbrellas proved inadequate to the task of protecting four adult sized people from the heavy downpour.  Also, I think Newton missed a physical constant of the universe.  In addition to the equal and opposite reaction, in both validity and importance, is the fact that a disparity of 6 inches between two people sharing the same umbrella results in both becoming wet.  May need a little research and some mathematical formulas,  but I think I am on to something.  Just post my Nobel prize in the comments.

The final resting place of Abelard and Heloise, two giants of the 11th and 12th centuries.

The next on our list of adventures was riding the Eurostar from Paris to London.  Part of the thrill of this was the fact that it is a high speed rail link, something that I don't believe exists in North America.  The seats were comfy, food was available, but I had to sit aisle side.  My propensity for queasiness made me opt for less view.  The motion was something though.  You could feel the speed building and building.  My husband shot this out the window and it gives you a little idea of the speed of the train.



 We arrived in London to the chaos of the British Rail system.  Not to say it was bad, there just was soo much of it.  Trains, subways, and more trains.  Wow.  Also, everything seems to be under construction in preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games.  I have only one comment, People going to and from airports and train stations have LUGGAGE!!!  You might want to think about those two steps up and 10 step down configurations that seem to predominate at the train stations.  In the "Tube", there are tons of lifts and super long escalators, but when you get to the train stations, they disappear.  Like Magic.

In London we stayed at the Londontown Hotel.  What can I say.  It was literally around a corner to Earl's Court Tube Station, which was fabulous.  It was neat in that it was a converted Victorian home.  It was very clean, but lightly furnished with three beds basically filling the room.  It had no air conditioning, which should not have been a problem since most days the temps barely hit 20 degrees Celsius, but there was no airflow and there was heat on in parts of the hotel.  If you had stayed here in anything warmer than 20, you would expire.  Even a ceiling fan would have helped tremendously.

We went to find dinner the first night and happened across the Princess Victoria.  Cannot say enough about this little restaurant.  The people were friendly, the food great and the prices reasonable.  So good in fact we went back a second night.  Mushy peas, yum!

In London we saw Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guards, The Tower of London, Westminster Abbey (much more weeping, even in line waiting, people must have thought I was looney, but Margaret Beaufort is lying there), the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Kensington Palace, Princess Anne coming out of a helicopter, Greenwich, the Maritime Museum, Trafalgar Square, a variety of circuses, the Thames, the Tower Bridge, Bond Street, Carnaby Street, on and on.  All of it very cool.

But by far the coolest, was the Tardis just outside Earl's Court station.  I swear it was not there the day we arrived and I am pretty sure it wasn't there the next day.

My absolute favourite thing in London was something called The Monument which commemorates the fire of 1666.  Love the photo on the linked site.  If that is all you knew of "The Monument" you would never believe you are standing in front of it when you in fact are.  It reminds me of Calgary's tower a little.  Somehow this monument got surrounded by modern buildings and doesn't really have that much space around it.  Kind of ironic.

Now one of my husband's prestated goals in London was seeing the pub which was used in Shaun of the Dead to be the Winchester Pub.  We found it ahead of time and one day he and my older daughter went looking for it while my younger daughter, who was not feeling well, and I headed back to our room.  Well it's not a pub of any sort anymore, but find it they did, sans Zombies.

And that brings me to the end of our trip and transitions nicely into the topic of my next post, which will be my Zombie book, well at least the beginning of it.

Paris, the city of "Where are we?"

Ah Paris.  First, I have to say that everyone warned us about driving in Paris.  They did not warn us about driving near Paris.  We were supposed to go to Chartres to see the beautiful blue stained glass in their famed cathedral.  In my husband's carefully timed plan, it should have worked.  We needed to have the rental car at Orly by 7 pm.  We left Vimy at 1 pm.  The drive to Paris should have taken 2 hrs, to Chartres a further 1 hr, at the cathedral for an hour, back to Orly in an hour and hand the car in with an hour to spare.  Easy peasy right?  Not so fast buddy.

The drive to Paris slowed to stop and go just as we hit Charles de Gaulle Airport.  OK.  An hour later we knew that Chartres was a pipe dream.  I was really upset, but tried really hard not to be.  What is, is.  I really wanted to see the sun pouring through the glass.  Chartres has a relic, is steeped in history, and is supposed to be breathtakingly beautiful.  Next time.

The other crazy thing about the traffic was the scooters and motorcycles screaming up between the stopped lanes of cars.  Not slowly either.  One inattentive driver and pow!  Finally we wondered how close to our hotel we were.  GPS said about 10 minutes, so we decided to get rid of the bags and hubby suggested us too.  Wow!  I have one thing to say.  DO NOT drive in Paris if you can at all avoid it.  My husband tells a horror story about a roundabout and the GPS saying go straight through, but how to tell when you are opposite to where you started while dodging traffic mayhem in a monster roundabout.  Needless to say he found both airport and hotel via transit.

So on to Paris.

 Cafes everywhere.  Paris has a feeling of relaxation.  Sure there is hustle and bustle, but there is the feeling that taking a moment is O.K. too.  Everyone we met was polite and helpful, despite our french being limited.  Also nice that unlike in Montreal where the slightest waiver brings on perfect English, here they let you struggle if you want.  We saw all the typical tourist sights, like the Arc de Triomphe and the Tour Eiffel. I highly recommend seeing it at night.  While you're waiting in line, watch the police harass the illegal souvenir sellers.

We did a little shopping at the Galleries Lafayette.  Didn't buy much, but the glass dome and the way the store is built around it is worth a visit all by itself.  But if you do get there, the real treat is the roof top patio.  There is a place to eat, but the observation area is free and the vantage point not too bad.  The eatery one floor down looks onto the back of the opera house.

Old and new juxtaposed by happenstance.

We did some churches too.  Of all the churches we visited in Europe, my husband says Saint Chapelle is his favourite.  This was the one that blew him away.  Restored to its Medieval appearance, it is a stunner.  The glass, and there is oh so much of it, seems to stand there on its own.  The tracery of support beams hardly intrude into the wall of glass.  On my weepy scale this one sure was up there.

As to the "Where are we?" of the title.  Well we wander, a lot.  We head out in a general direction confident that we can find our way.  In many places, especially in the US and Canada with cities built on grids, this is not overly difficult even without a map.  Paris is a whole different critter.  First, "Where are the street signs?"  This took us a bit to figure out.  They are on the buildings on the corners.  Bring binoculars, they are small.  Second, in Paris all the buildings are about the same height and so finding tall landmarks by which to steer doesn't work.  Third, the buildings are all similar looking and hard to distinguish, so getting lost in the maze of streets is easy.  Use a good map.  Fortunately, the one our fantastic hotel Classics Hotel Bastille gave us was perfect, complete with Metro map and stops marked.  I highly recommend both the hotel and the Metro.

A little Europe

Ahhhh, back home.  After 2 1/2 weeks of travel, I am usually so wanting to go home.  I would go anywhere with my own bed, house, kitchen, book shelf and craft room in tow.  Sadly, we cannot yet beam ourselves anywhere, and really I don't want to get into that is it really you argument.

We visited a few places, the first being Amsterdam.  As my youngest said it was the oldest looking of the three major cities we visited.  We stayed at the WestCord Art Hotel which was a five minute bus ride from the central station and was a great place to stay.  We got around with a 48 hour transit pass which was the perfect way to go.  Amsterdam though has two marks against it in my books.  The first being the pot.  I want a coffee shop to sell coffee.  I want to take my kids to a restaurant and know that it's not a front for a pot den.  We ended up at Burger King.  What a stinking (like skunk) shame.  Nonetheless, it was beautiful and the Rijksmuseum and Historische Museum Amsterdam were both well worth visiting.  The other crazy thing about Amsterdam was the bicycles.  All I can say is pedestrian beware.  Look all ways before stepping anywhere.

Delft on the other hand, had all the canal city charm with fewer bicycles, no skunks and a gorgeous city square lined with cafes where on a Saturday you could watch the parade of weddings.

After Delft it was Osnabrück, Germany to visit relatives.  We visited a few of the sites in and around this lovely town and I am not biased because it's my parents hometown.

 

After Osnabrück, it was off to Lille for the express purpose of seeing the Vimy Ridge monument the next day.  Lille was a little bit of a surprise.  I don't know why, but I expected a small town.  The old part of town was small with a cathedral and pretty little streets where the awnings of the restaurants almost met over the middle of the street.  Pretty.  Our hotel was near the train station and in a big complex attached to the station that had a shopping mall and full grocery store in it.  The whole complex was modern and was literally five minutes from the old town on foot.  Getting to the hotel by car from the highway was an almost 2 hour adventure that finished with the whole family doing a mission impossible trick with a parking garage door and my husband driving the car through the parking garage sounding like he was going super fast only because of the rubber coating on the garage floor.  High fives all around.

The next day we had Vimy Ridge in our sights.  This monument is a must see.  Be forewarned, it takes longer than you think to see and you don't want to rush.  Also, without a car of your own, we rented for this part of the trip, you have to rely on a tour group as no public transit goes to the site.  We love this monument because it is beautiful and because, despite all the hyperbole about Vimy being the great victory that allowed Canada to sever the apron strings with Britain and be recognized in her own right, it is a war memorial about sadness and loss.  There is nothing celebratory about this monument and when it comes to war that is as it should be.

Next: PARIS