I’ve just posted a new set of photos from our trip to France. This time I’ve
put up photos of le Musée du quai Branly, a fabulous example of modern
architecure together with ecologically-inspired landscaping that opened next to
the Eiffel Tower in 2006. Anna and I walked around outside as we made our way
back to our hotel one afternoon; maybe next time we’ll go inside!
I’m down to just 10 sets from France that need processing and posting. At least
I’ve already done a once-over and removed most of the crappy shots. Now it’s
just reviewing, tweaking, and posting. With luck, I’ll have them all posted by
Christmas!
It seems that quite a bit of time went by since my last blog entry before the
server downtime. I hadn’t realized. Since then, I’ve posted a bunch more photos
from our trip to France. First up, I posted photos from our Christmas in Rouen.
Anna was especially happy with the dangly earrings. Click the photo to see the
complete set.
Then I went back in time a bit and posted photos from our second stay in Paris.
First up was a set from Notre Dame de Paris. I was fortunate to be there on a
cloudy day, so that the light coming in the stained glass windows didn’t
overwhelm the interior light, so that you can actually see some of the interior.
I’m especially proud of this photo, it just came together perfectly. Click for
the complete set.
The day after Notre Dame, Anna and I went to Cité des sciences & de
l’industrie, a fantastic science and industry museum, featuring Cité des
Enfants, a hands-on children’s museum with interactive, hands-on exhibits. Anna
loved it so much that she wanted to go back, which we did in January. Maybe I’ll
get to those photos sometime in March. ;-)
And finally, there are these shots from Centre Georges Pompidou. It was rainy
and wet when we were there (immediately after Notre Dame, in fact), but the
weather kind of lended itself to the mood at La Fontaine Stravinsky. And of
course, I have more photos of Anna playing in the children’s exhibit there.
And finally, just as a bonus, here are some photos I took this morning in Anna’s
dance and French classes. The light wasn’t great (all fluorescent), and shooting
at ISO 400 at F/1.8 wasn’t the best idea, I’ve decided. I kept only about 10 out
of 124 shots. Next time I’ll go up to ISO 800 and try to close down the aperture
a bit. Wish me luck on that!
I have a lot more photos from France to process, still. I’ll post here as I get
them on Flickr. It takes a while because Aperture is pretty slow at importing
RAW photos from my Canon Rebel XSi, and even slower when I start to make changes
to the photos. So it’s dragging on, but I’ll keep slogging at it. The trick will
be for me to try to stay ahead of the curve on photos taken since the trip. I’ve
only got 600 of those. Yikes! Wish me luck!
We overnighted in Paris last week. It was a whirlwind visit but we made the best
of it. I keep thinking I’ll take the time to blog more about our trip, but keep
using my time to process the photos I’ve taken. Honestly, Aperture is still
quite a time suck, even in its 2.0 iteration. I might have to try Lightroom one
of these days.
At any rate, I’ve gone through about a third of the photos from that trip and
have posted them in a Flickr photo set Keep visiting that set over the next
few days as I process more of the photos. Then maybe I’ll get to the shots I’ve
made here in Rouen!
In the meantime, for much more active blogging of our trip, be sure to visit
Julie’s blog.
Well, we made it. Things went pretty smoothly, all told. The flight was fairly
empty, so Anna, at least, was able to lie across two seats and get a few hours
of sleep. Julie and I enjoyed the free cognac and dark chocolate. Those European
airlines sure know how to take care of their passengers.
The Frankfurt layover was uneventful, if a bit on the long side. We did get a
bit confused, going to the wrong terminal only to discover that our connecting
flight was in the terminal we arrived in. But it was no big deal; good to move
around a bit. The novel part for me was customs. Even though we were flying to
France, we went through customs in German. Hello EU!
Arriving in Paris, we fetched our bags from baggage claim and headed for the
taxi stand. We were approached my some random guy offering us a ride into town
in his “taxi” for €80, and then €50, but I would have none of it. We got a
standard tax at the stand allocated for that purpose, and arrived safely at hour
hotel 20 minutes later for around €35. Right, you don’t just go along with the
aggressive dudes who approach you uninvited in the terminal anymore. Yay
progress!
At the hotel, Julie and Anna napped for a bit (it was mid-afternoon, and I
wouldn’t let them have more than an hour), and then we went out for a bite. The
hotel is in a great part of town, just a few blocks from le Tour Eiffel in the
7e arrondissemont. We were tired, though, so just hit a local brasserie, where
we had pizza and salad and, for Anna, at the suggestion of our server, french
fries (yes, the server called them that; must’ve assumed we were stupid
Americans!). Then we walked around a bit and hit the hay by 8 pm.
Next morning, after a nice light breakfast of rolls, croissants, and home-made
jelly, we walked over to the Eiffel Tower for a quick look around. The sky was
grey and things a bit wet, but we enjoyed it. Anna rode on a nearby carousel. We
walked under the tower, currently undergoing some major maintenance, and watched
the boats go by on the river for a bit. Then we grabbed a cab back to the hotel,
got our stuff, and headed to the train station.
We were nice and early for the TGV, but the train itself was late. The quai was
announced only a few minutes before the scheduled departure and then, once on
the train, we waited 45 minutes to actually leave. Once we did leave, however,
the trip to Rouen took only a bit more than an hour. Anna fell asleep in Julie’s
lap while I consumed The New Yorker.
In Rouen, we took another taxi to our house, only a few minutes away, and were
warmly greeted by our hosts. For the next 7 hours, Julie struggled with
translations, our hosts speaking nary a word of Anglaise, as a parade of friends
and neighbors came to call: The friends of our hosts who are also going to be
staying our house in Portland, along with their car, which we’re borrowing; the
graphic designer tenant in the flat next-door, who dropped by with a bag of
fresh-baked breads. The two neighbor girls, aged 4 and 6, along with their
mother; the baby-sitter and her parents, and probably other people I’m
forgetting. Jean-Paul also gave us a quick driven tour of Rouen, including their
plot in the local community garden, where we can go pick fresh carrots, brussels
sprouts, cabbage, leeks, beets, and other yummy stuff. The town looks nice, too.
After a lovely dinner, Julie and I headed to bed. Anna awoke a few times in the
night, but did pretty well overall. Our hosts left at 6:30, and we got up
shortly thereafter to start our first full day in our house in Rouen. After
breakfasting on the fresh bread, Neufchâtel cheese, and home-made jelly, we took
the loaned umbrella-stroller and hit the streets to get to know our new town a
bit. We’re up on a hill north of the downtown area, and getting around with the
stroller is a bit of a drag, but the town is quite nice, if cold this time of
year (that was expected). Over the next few days, we walked to the open-air
market downtown and bought some produce and fromage, hit an incredible
children’s bookstore on Rue Jeanne d’Arc, and, today, le Musee des Beaux-Arts.
Anna has complained a bit, but has been willing to go along with our exploring
plans so far. We’ll see how things go in the next few days.
The house we’re staying in is pretty nice. It’s actually three very narrow flats
combined into one moderately-sized house. The first floor has an entry way and
bathroom, a media room and dining room, and a kitchen and laundry room (no
dryer; we hang our laundry here). The second floor has a den/guest bedroom, a
large bathroom, and our host’s bedroom. The top floor, which is a converted
attic, has three bedrooms: ours, Anna’s, and a third room with lots of toys in
it (“the toy room”). The size of the space suits us well.
Jet lag hasn’t been near the problem we’ve expected, although J and I have had
trouble staying awake between 2pm and 5pm. Anna has awakened a few times each
night, but down to only once last night, around 1:15. Hopefully she’ll sleep
straight through tonight! I (mostly) skipped the nap yesterday and today, and J
didn’t nap today, so I’m thinking that tomorrow we should be pretty near fully
acclimated to the time zone.
Well this has been pretty boring. For a more interesting description of our
travels, see Julie’s blog, Six Semaines en France. I’ll see about blogging
here a bit more regularly, too, to try to avoid these long boring posts, though
your best luck to learn about our visit to France from me is via my Flicker
photostream.
Meanwhile, up next: A visit to Paris Tuesday to Wednesday this week, and
planning another visit for December 10th, around a possible visit to the Paris
Perl Mongers.
We were supposed to leave for France yesterday, but arrived at the airport to
find that Lufthansa rescheduled us to leave on Monday (today) instead. United
had called us a few weeks ago to alert us about the schedule change: they said
the time had changed, not the date. Fuckers. So we got an extra day in Portland.
I took Anna to lunch while our friend Tasia took Julie out for a cocktail.
That smoothed things over well enough.
So today we’re leaving for reals (we hope!). We arrive in Paris tomorrow,
November 25th, where we’ll (now) spend one night, and then it’s on to Rouen,
where are taking advantage of a house exchange for the next six weeks. We return
to Portland on Jan 4, 2009.
I’m toying with a visit to the Paris Perl Mongueu(r|se)s for their next
meeting on December, 10th. I’ll need to see what the TGV schedule looks like for
a late-night return to Rouen, though. If you’re a part of paris.pm, let me know
if you’d like me to do some sort of technical talk!
As for the rest of our visit, Julie has started a travel blog for this
trip, and I’ll likely blog the trip and post photos here. More after we
arrive!
