The City of Lights

Well, another weekend, another trip. I am starting to feel like a true jet-setter now! I went back to Paris this weekend with my friend Crystal. Luckily for me, we did not do all the same things that I did with my family. First of all, we got to the hotel and it was an old little hole in the wall, but the people there were very friendly and the room was clean. We were a little disturbed by the look of the place at first but in a good neighborhood for 120 EUR a night what to you expect. The added bonus is that we each got our own double bed which is quite unusual for the hotel rooms here. I had to sign us up for a triple room because there were no double rooms available. A triple room at the best hotels is one double bed and one twin bed. So this was much more than I expected. In the States you get so used to the comfort of knowing that you will almost always have two double beds in a standard room. Here that is very hard to get. Since the hotel is basically just to sleep, we got over that one pretty quickly. We had gotten the same hop on hop off bus tour passes for the next couple days so we decided to stick with what was in our area for that day. Our first stop was at the Musee d’Orsay. I really liked some of the work here, mostly the Renoir Paintings and the Rodin Sculptures. But there was also a special photography exhibition that was really cool. I think that I pushed Crystal a bit over the edge with the museums between here and Amsterdam so I did miss some of the impressionist work that I would have liked to see there. As it is a renovated train station the architecture of the building was just as cool as the pieces in it. From there we went over to where we got our bus passes and signed up for the Illuminations night tour of Paris and then walked around. We found the highlight of my trip….a Starbucks Coffee! For those of you who have heard me complain about the size of the coffee in Luxembourg, you will know how truly exciting this was for me. I had to pay 5 Euros for a Caramel Macchiato but I had a coffee that I could carry around with me! I also had to take a picture of myself in front of the Starbucks to send back…I know I am such a dork, but I was really excited about it. After my exciting trip to Starbucks we had a glass of wine at a little café that backed on one of the really old churches in the area, it was a really cool atmosphere to sit outside and enjoy, and then we had a long dinner at another little café, and the food was fabulous. We started with escargot, which I probably just like for the garlic butter, but it was really yummy. Then we each had the duck and goat cheese salad, also really nice, plus coffee and crème brulee. It was a long dinner, but very worth it, probably one of the best meals I have had so far. Then it was time for the night tour. I took the bulk of my pictures here, Paris is really beautiful at night, especially the Eiffel Tower all lit up, we really enjoyed this tour more than just about everything. We decided also to make this trip more of a vacation than we had the other ones, so we slept in, at least it was sleeping in for me, Crystal would have slept until noon, I woke up at about 9:30, Sorry Crystal. By the time we got ready and ventured out, we had a late breakfast at another little café because as you may know or guess, there are about a million of these in Paris. After that we found our bus tour in front of the Louvre and went over to the Champs Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe. We really did not spend too much time here as the lines were really long and we had already planned to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. When we got there the line was really long and it was really hot out pretty much the whole weekend. If you ever decide to go there, you can only make reservations on tickets for group tours and be prepared to spend about 3 hours. The view was great; you could see the whole city from there. Unfortunately when we came down we realized that our tour bus had been shut down for the night due to the Musicfest that was going to happen that night. This posed a problem as we needed find the Metro and figure out our own way home. Obviously, it happened but it was a little bit of a project. Another great dinner at yet another little café helped to curb the annoyance that we felt. We stayed there for quite some time and heard some of the bands playing while we were walking home. Sunday, we slept in again and then grabbed a quick pastry and headed to the Rodin Museum. This is Crystal’s favorite sculpture and really all she wanted to see was The Thinker which was in the garden there. To our pleasant surprise you are able to go into the gardens for free, so we just took a garden pass and walked around there. I took some photos there and the we left and went to the Louvre. We did the short tour there, which touched on the three most popular pieces, the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. We were going to try and do another tour, but the GPS on the audio/visual tour we got was a little too much for either of us to figure out probably due to the heat, but we decided to forgo a second tour and just wait a the train station. We made it back to Luxembourg at about 9:15pm. Although we were really tired, we decided to go out anyway. It was the Duke’s Birthday weekend, which is like our 4th of July, but much bigger. There were fireworks, bands, food and drink vendors all over the streets. It was an amazingly large party and a lot of fun. Other than losing Crystal and needing to find her again it was a great time. We got home about 1:30 in the morning and we could have stayed out much later. Several of my friends were out until the sun came up, but since Crystal needed to be at the airport by 8 in the morning we opted for a couple hours sleep instead. Since I had Monday off here, I could rest then. Overall, it was another great weekend. Paris is really one of my favorite places so far and the Duke’s birthday celebration was something that could not be missed!

The Country with two faces

Well, Amsterdam was a blast. It is funny how the two sides of Amsterdam are at two different ends of the spectrum. You either have the seedy, drug and sex scene or a whole slew of museums and cultural interests. Once you get past the train station, the atmosphere is very laid back and relaxed. There are always about a thousand people riding their bicycles, which you will be able to see when I post some of the pictures. It was cold there too. It is unfortunate because the weather has been really nice pretty much until Crystal landed and then it turned cold. She actually had to go out and buy a jacket because it was that cold out. Anyway, back to Amsterdam…the train ride from Luxembourg to Amsterdam is about 6 hours. The only potentially bad part about the train rides to and from was the connection time. We had about 4 minutes on the way there to make the connection in Brussels to get to Amsterdam and they were boarding our train on the way back already when we were transferring to go home, so we had to hustle with all our luggage, or since Crystal has a bad back…I had to hustle with all our luggage. But we made it. When we got to Amsterdam, at about 2pm on Saturday we went to our hotel. It was a very small hotel called Hotel de Paris, it got very good reviews on line. It was more like a large bed and breakfast. We liked it, it was clean and the people were friendly, but the rooms were so tiny. It was like sharing a shoebox! We were only there to sleep so we muddled through. The first place we went was Anne Frank’s house. This was top of my list of what I wanted to visit in Amsterdam. The line is always really long to get in, but thankfully it moved rather quickly. The house was left empty, as everything was confiscated when the Nazis came in to arrest the people living there, because that was how Anne’s father wanted it to remain. I really was interested in the interviews and personal accounts here and to see the house. I do think that they could have done a little more to draw you, but overall I am happy I went. From there we walked around a bit and got some dinner. After that is was time for our walking tour of the Red Light District, bet you did not even know that they had those. Well they do, and it was quite informative. The red light district was not as much of a shock as I thought it might be, maybe I am just too desensitized by what was on TV, but I just found it interesting.

The next day we did more or less the Museum Circuit, we went to Rembrandt’s house, the Amsterdam Dungeons, and the Torture Museum. Out of these Rembrandt’s house was my clear favorite. Rembrandt’s house not only displayed some of the works but it also had a demonstration of the etching process and an audio commentary to put the whole place in perspective. The Amsterdam dungeons made advertised itself as a historical reenactment when in fact it was more like a really good haunted house with some historical basis. It was still really good though, parts of it did scare the shit out of me, it just was not what I expected. The torture museum was displaying torture devices from around the Spanish Inquisition with some illustrations to put how the device was used in perspective, it was disturbing to say the least but still really interesting. After that we caught the last boat to one of the ramps closer to our hotel. By then we were tired and hungry and we walked past the Hard Rock Café and decided to eat there. Not bad, the usual for any of those places.
On our last day there we went to the Van Gogh Museum. This I think was my favorite. Partly because I really like the work and also because the commentary that we got to go along with it also put the work in perspective to what was going on in his life at the time and that really helped to see the progression of what was happening and tying it all in.
We took the train back to Luxembourg and we just made the connection in Brussels, they were already board the train when we arrived. We arrived back in Luxembourg at about 8:30pm. All in all Amsterdam was a lot of fun, I think that we are both really glad we went. Tonight we went to Metz for dinner with Laurence and took some more pictures. We went to a crepe restaurant. I did not know that crepes could be used for more than dessert, but the food was really good. I told Laurence that we will have to bring all my visitors back here so people who are visiting be prepared! Now in a few more days it is back to Paris again. I am just becoming the little world traveler!

French Phrase of the Week

Hi There,

Sorry I forgot....here is the french Phrase of the week:

Je crois que je travaille trop. Non, je sais que je travaille trop!

We are getting a little further into the year, I think you can figure out the meaning :)
If not, let me know!

The First Paris Excursion

I know, I know...it has been too long since I wrote anything down. The weekend before last there was really nothing interesting going on. I was just getting ready for the arrival of my family, so lots of cleaning and food shopping. It was not worth a whole blog entry so I skipped that weekend altogether. Then the fun stuff began. My family arrived on Tuesday morning from the USA. My sister had quite the ordeal with her transfer flight and almost did not make it. For those of you who travel here at some point, American Airlines does not have an agreement with Lux Air. If you check a bag they will not transfer it. You need to retrieve it, go through customs, go back through security and then check in for your next flight. My sister had checked a bag, my parents came with carry on luggage, so this was her ordeal. She had an hour and a little more to make her flight, if it was not for the people at Lux Air she would not have been here. They escorted her through security and from customs, and when she forgot her purse at security one of the Lux Air employees ran all the way back there to get it for her. They held the plane for her and she made it here on the flight that she was supposed to. I have to say that they definitely went above and beyond, Thank God for all of us. Thankfully, the rest of the trip was not so eventful. No one really slept on the plane, so when they arrived I let them sleep for a little while, not too long though because that is when it is hard to adjust to the time. After that we walked to my favorite coffee place in the center (one of the two places here that has normal size coffee!) and we sat and had some coffee and talked to Peter, the owner. Then we walked around and I showed them some of the places that I think are the most picturesque. Laurence came over for dinner to meet the family, generally it was a low key but nice day. On Wednesday, I took them to Trier, Germany. they really liked it there, we saw a couple more sites than I had seen before such as the electoral palace and the constantine bascilica. We ate some real german food and then headed for home. Thursday was going to be an early day because then we were leaving for Paris. Every morning, I went across the street to the bakery to get fresh croissants. Thursday was no exception. I got some croissants with my father and then we went to the fruit market and got some fruit for the ride as well. Upon arriving back at my place, Jenni informed us that our train was in fact at 8:55 not 9:55 and we needed to leave right then, good thing I am only about 2 blocks from the train station! We did make the train no problem, we switched trains in Metz in France ( and got some drinks to wash down the croissants!) and then arrived in Paris at noon. The first thing that struck me was how overwhelming it was to be in a completely foriegn city for the first time. After a little discussion we opted to take a cab to the hotel, which was not that far away, but without a map I just wanted to get there and be done with it. After dropping our things at the hotel, we went for lunch. We picked a small neighborhood restaurant on the same street since we needed to return back to the hotel in an hour to move our things to the room. The other thing that struck me was how nice the people in Paris were, so many Americans talk about their bad experiences in Paris and I found the people warm and friendly. I do speak some french so maybe the effort helped, but even when they couldn't understand my french and I spoke english, they were always really nice and helpful. After lunch, we went to Notre Dame. We walked the 2 KM from the hotel. On the way we found the Jewish History Museum and decided to go there. My sister is really interested in the history of the Holocaust, unfortunately there was not a lot of that here. Paris is in the process of building another museum soley dedicated to the Holocaust. The history of the Jewish People in Paris was very interesting though. Notre Dame was beautiful and very ornate. There were lots of little individual chapel areas inside and it was really something to see. After leaving Notre Dame it was time for a snack. Mark these moments, because food did not play a major part in this trip! My father called it the slimming tour! In order to fit everything in that people wanted to do the next day we at almost nothing until dinner! Each day was also filled with a little souvenir shopping. All the meals that we did eat were very good. On friday, we tried to squeeze in all that we could. We took the L'Open Tour Buses. They are hop on hop off buses that you can take at your own pace to all the sites and they worked out really well. We went to the Louvre, the Champs-Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, and the Catacombes, and all on just the croissant we had in the morning. (Obviously we are big on croissants in this family!) After dinner, we took at ride on the Sienne. Saturday was the last day for Paris, we devoted that day to Pere LaChaise cemetery and the completion of our shopping. Pere Lachaise has so many interesting people buried there, we only made it to a few: Jim Morrison, Chopin, and Seurat. There were so many other ones to see if you had the time, but alas we did not. We arrived back in Luxembourg Satuday evening and went to dinner with Laurence to Chigorie, a traditional French Restaurant. As with the other places, the food was fabulous, this one was better than most though. Then we went for a walk and looked out over the grund at night. Jenni got some pictures of this, it was really cool. Sunday, was the last day they had here, and I did not have too much planned. The only plan that I had was to meet Kathy for lunch since it was her birthday. Before that I tried to squeeze in some of the history of Luxembourg so we went to the history museum. This was cool, it starts on the bottom floor and works it way up to present day, we probably could have spent some more time there but we actually got a little sleep so it was somewhat of a late start. We ate lunch at Beaujolais, a little pizza place in the centre. It was the nicest day we had had all along. Paris was in the 50's and cold. Luxembourg was in the 70's and sunny. All of it was fun anyway, but I was happy to have a nice day. Kathy suggested that after lunch she bring us to the American Cemetary in Luxembourg. General Patton is buried there, which I did not know before coming here, so it was really interesting to see, we also went to the German Cemetary a couple streets away and it was sad to see the difference between the two. The German cemetary was much more somber and had 4 people to a grave, where the American Cemetary was sunny and peaceful. Both were interesting in their own rite. When we completed all the site seeing we could fit in, we went back to the centre for some ice cream and then walked back toward my place to meet Laurence for a drink. It was sad here yesterday with out my family, after all the hustle and bustle of the last week, I got used to the noise and the lack of space. The quiet was almost deafening. Luckily for me the next of my visitors from home arrives on Thursday! My friend Crystal is coming so I have no time to do anything but restock the fridge and get ready for her arrival! I am excited. We are heading for Amsterdam this weekend and then back to Paris the next. Let the good times keep coming!