(Double-click video to play. Single-click to pause/stop.)
Due to the noise the cicadas make, I’ll transcribe the audio.
Larry: Talk about them…
Lisa: You are listening to the music of Provençal summertime which is the cicadas, or cigales in French. They are loud and they are everywhere! But I kind of like it.
We had some great experiences in Spain. We had some very frustrating experiences in Spain. I’ll recap what would otherwise be a long story as a warning to travelers going to Barcelona. For the record, we had read and heard that Barcelona is full of pick-pockets and other theives and criminals, so our guard was up plenty. Problem is, we didn’t know all of their tricks. So let this be a lesson from our wallet to yours.
June 22
La Rambla and Shopping
Spontaneous and mysterious flat tire while at a stop light, pointed out to us by a couple of guys on a scooter. Lisa waits with car on busy road while I carry the slashed wheel on my dented head to the only 24hr garage in Barcelona, a mile away.
June 23
While attempting to go to the Picasso museum street thieves pull scam on us. One by my door motions that we have yet another flat tire and would not being satisfied with an inch of window. He had to bang on the door to get me to open it (unlocking all doors), accomplice opens back door on passenger side and runs with Lisa’s Nikon camera ($800). I took up chase but lose the parasites in Barcelona alleys.
We decide there’s nothing else to do as we’d have nothing to share with the police and find a lot to park the car for another attempt at the museum. At a stop light we have the same scam tried on us again (yes, not 10 minutes later than the successful attempt). This time I yell unkind words at the weasel and he and his accomplice walk away in shame. Truth be told, I was angry enough at not catching the first set that had I not been concerned about sticking around to protect Lisa, I’d likely have gotten out and done my best to take care of things, with perhaps good but likely bad results as an American dislocating the elbows of parasites in a foreign country is not looked upon well from what I understand, and I only had one small weapon. Don’t know what they might have had.
After parking the car, we approached the museum again on foot, but going through the area where I lost the first set of Barcelona’s vast population of parasites. I see one and he recognizes both Lisa and me and ducks into the kitchen of the restaurant he was in. I start taking pictures of him and his fellow parasites and keep close watch on the rat-hole of a restaurant they inhabit, while Lisa goes into a nearby shop to call the police. Police come, we give report, they ask us to file a full report at the station which we agree to and end up spending essentially the rest of the day there. Lost day on parasites. The second coming can’t come soon enough, though we have been praying that those looting wastes of food/water/air will find Christ and change their ways.
Oh, by the way, the police ask why we thought the guy might be right enough about the flat tire to open the door. We tell him that we had had a flat the night before. He said “kids on a scooter tell you?” We say “Uh, yeah.” He proceeds to tell us that the kids on the scooter were the ones that slashed our tire, with a knife or sharpened screwdriver in their shoe. They have an accomplice who then opens the door, same as the above mentioned procedure, and takes whatever is close-by inside. The cop asks if anything was missing, but there wasn’t. He says, “then they failed that time. That’s good.” Yeah, celebration time.
So, to sum up. We were in Barcelona 3 days. Crime was attempted on us 3 times. Two were successful (a camera to the tune of $800, and a tire to the tune of $200 and a night and day wasted). We decide Spain is not for us until they can get a new government and police force who take immigration and crime seriously. Goodbye Barcelona.
June 24
We drive from Spain back to France. Wonderful to see France. Vive La France.
We drive to Rocamadour, a cliff town in the Dordogne region with a spectacular appearance. We stay the night in one of the well-furnished out buildings of a beautiful farm turned chic Hotel just a few kilometers away from town. We head back into town and explore on foot. Amazing sights: tight walking streets lined with shops and restaurants, ancient buildings covered with character, a small old chapel next to the grave site of one St. Amadour. Night pictures from various places around the valley looking at the lit city. One of the best parts of the trip so far. Amazing.
And finally, I get to see all the fairy tale French chateaus in person. I’ve been waiting a long time to see Chambord and Chenonceau particularly. The pictures here speak for themselves so I won’t spend a lot of time on the details. We spent a wonderful week in the town of Chinon in the west end of the Loire region. Chinon has a very large chateau overlooking the city and is most famous as the place that Joan of Arc came to meet with Charles VII about her visions, who then granted her permission to leave with the army to Orleans. And the rest, as they say, is history. There isn’t much left of the chateau at Chinon today, unfortunately.
We absolutely love our little hotel in Chinon. I found it thanks to a friend who sent me an article from Budget Travel about their favorite secret hotels in the Loire Valley. We chose the Hotel Diderot, an inn set in a 15th century building owned and run by Laurent Dutheil and his two sisters, Martine and Francoise. It is gorgeous from top to bottom, the breakfasts are out of this world, and the hosts could not have been more gracious.
Over the next several days we spent time at some of the more famous of the ~80 chateaus in the Loire Valley, including Chenonceau, Chambord, Amboise, and Villandry. You will probably recognize the pictures of Chenonceau and Chambord, as they are the most famous of the Loire Valley chateaus.
Villandry is known for its amazing gardens – the chateau and gardens have been owned and maintained by the same Spanish family for many generations now, and they are incredible. One of my favorite parts was the cardamom flavored ice cream sold from the cart out front. I loooove cardamom, I could bathe in it.
We were a bit disappointed in Chenonceau only because they are undertaking an external restoration and half of it was covered in scaffolding. How dare they ruin our pictures! The inside of the chateau is in amazing shape though. Chenonceau has a funny history. Given to the Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of Henry II, as a gift, it was then taken from her after Henry’s death by his wife, Catherine de Medici. Catherine then made this her favorite chateau, adding her own gardens and throwing lavish parties for the elite of France. France’s first fireworks were shown at Chenonceau. Chenonceau also played an important role during World War II as one side of the River Cher was Nazi territory and the other side was Vichy territory. Cheonceau’s grand gallery was used as a means to escape Nazi territory, as the door on the far side opened up to the Vichy territory.
Chambord was everything I imagined and more. It is the largest of the Loire Valley chateaus with over 400 rooms, 84 staircases, and 300 fireplaces, and is set in a park that is the size of the entire city of Paris. It does not disappoint and is a must-see if you are ever in the neighborhood.
We didn’t realize until we started reading up on the area but Leonardo DaVinci is buried at the former royal palace in Amboise. He spent the last 3 years of his life in the Loire Valley. At the invitation of King Francis 1st, he traveled by mule over the Alps from Italy with two of his apprentices in tow, carrying with him his 3 favorite paintings, one of which was the Mona Lisa. King Francis gave Leonardo the nearby Clos de Luce to live in (connected to the royal palace by an underground tunnel). Popular legend has it that King Francis was with Leonardo and holding his head in his arms when he died. Leonardo was then buried in the Chapel of St. Hubert at the royal palace. Unfortunately the chapel was mostly destroyed during the French Revolution. It was not until several years later when Napoleon III hired an engineer and architect to restore and rebuild parts of the original Chateau at Amboise that they discovered a sepulchre with a complete skeleton along with some of the letters of Leonardo’s name. After researching they determined that this was the body of Leonardo DaVinci and they put him in a proper sepulchre in the newly rebuilt chapel at the royal chateau. We were shocked to discover that not only was DaVinci not buried in Italy, but that his grave had been done such great disservice.
Running Out of Time in Paris
We’ve realized that we are quickly running out of time here, and with a laundry list of things left to do. I’m never as productive with my time as I’d like to think I am. At least we emerged victorious from the last round of shoe shopping for Larry over the weekend. Yea for us! And we got to see a neighborhood that we had not previously been to on this visit, the 11th Arrondissement near the Bastille. It was not the well-manicured, looks-just-so, type of neighborhood that we’re living in. No Kenzo or Armani boutiques, no pricey hotels or restaurants. It had a lot more ethnic restaurants and stores, more graffiti, and felt just a bit more run down. We actually weren’t far from the Pere Lachaise cemetery but we were too tired after all the shoe shopping to trek over there. Oscar Wilde and Chopin will have to wait a bit longer for our visit.
Vélo (bicycle) + liberté (freedom) = Vélib. But not for us.
In the summer of 2007, Paris launched a grand undertaking in the form of Vélib. Vélib is a community automated bike rental system born of a symbiotic relationship between City Hall and JCDecaux, the French advertising company. JCDecaux has a contract with the city of Paris in which it has agreed to administer the Vélib program in exchange for free use of some 1,600 advertising boards around the city, and a share of the bike rental fees that it produces. You cannot walk around Paris without noticing the Vélib stations prominently featured at every Metro station and more – within the borders of Paris there are over 20,000 bikes at nearly 1,500 stations which are situated roughly 300 meters apart, and they are available 24/7. Vélib was an instant hit when it debuted and has only grown in popularity. The Vélib program is now being rolled out to many of the suburbs surrounding Paris. The idea behind the program is to increase convenience and mobility for Parisians, as well as provide a “green” form of transportation. The intent is for users to just take them to get from one spot to the other, or to run quick errands. You can subscribe to a one year pass for 29 Euro, and each time you take a bike the first 1/2 hour is free. I actually don’t know if they make money off of it. The bikes themselves are functionally designed for the program and certainly not the sporty lightweight mountain bikes that Larry and I are used to at home. But they get the job done.
When Larry and I were here in July 2007, we noticed these community bikes parked all around town and decided to take a spin. Except we could not get the automated station to accept our credit card. Any of our cards. We went through the arduous task of selecting the type of plan we wanted (you have a choice of a 1 day or 1 week plan, which are 1 Euro and 5 Euros, respectively), agreeing to the terms and conditions, and inserting our card, only to be told each time that the card was not accepted. We got frustrated and gave up.
Now that we’re back for a longer trip, we decided to give them another chance. After having dinner at our favorite neighborhood brasserie, we went up to the closest Vélib station to check out bikes. And again could not get the computer to accept our credit card. The problem we had, and have had in other places, is that all European credit cards are implanted with a chip which is read by the machine, rather than the magnetic strip that US credit card readers generally rely upon. These stations were obviously designed to read the chip implanted cards, but could not read our plain ol’ magnetic strips. We tried a few different kinds of cards and gave up, vowing to return the next day with even more kinds of credit cards. One of them had to work, eventually. Defeated yet again by the Vélib man behind the curtain.
The next evening we returned with every type of credit card I brought to Europe with me. We were determined to make it work. And finally – the American Express came through for us! Go figure. Happily we chose our bikes and withdrew them from the terminals, and headed off in the direction of the Eiffel Tower. Riding these bikes is definitely not the same as my Trek at home – I felt like an unstable newbie who hadn’t been on a bike in 10 years.
We got to the Eiffel Tower quickly and enjoyed our ride down the Champs de Mars promenade and under the tower. Only the line to take the ascenseur (elevator) to the top was long. Very long. We had hoped that by going in the middle of a random weekday we would evade some of the crowds but our hopes were dashed. We are in full tourist season now.
We also couldn’t find a Vélib station to drop the bikes. Despite knowing there were several in the area, and despite running into them without trying on every other outing we’ve taken here, without knowing the exact location we could not seem to catch sight of a single one in the area. So, we decided to press on and take a little bike tour of the city. We crossed the Pont d’Iéna which runs just behind the Eiffel Tower, and rode up toward the Trocadéro area on the paths surrounding the Palais de Chaillot, where I happily collapsed on the grass and Larry took advantage of my exhaustion by snapping a picture.
We were able to spend some time tooling around the rive droite before heading back across to the rive gauche and visiting Lady Liberty’s little sister. They are looking at each other across the Atlantic.
The Tuilleries is for the Birds; Le Louvre Part II
We made another visit to the Louvre this week as well, first stopping to sit in the Tuilleries and eat some sandwiches. Several of our winged friends helped me finish mine. At first I just threw pieces of bread, cheese or meat down to them, which inevitably resulted in at least a 10-way fight until one tenacious fellow grabbed the whole piece and flew off, victorious, with his treasure in his beak, usually followed by at least one competitor in hot pursuit where I can only assume the bickering continued. After a while I figured out how to get them to line up next to me on the bench in an orderly fashion and wait for their piece. They were not shy. (Don’t worry, I washed my hands to avoid any bird flu contamination).
One little girl was so perfectly comfortable with us that she curled up on the arm rest next to me and took a nap. Too cute.
We spent our time in the Louvre this week primarily on the top floor of the Richelieu wing, which is where the Dutch masters such as Rembrandt and Vermeer reside. We saw some beautiful paintings – the details in some of these paintings are just incredible. It gives me a headache just to try to focus in on the detail, I can’t imagine painting it.
We finished with a walk through one part of the sculpture wing.
And of course, finished off our day of high culture and art with a visit to McDonald’s. We have discovered that McDonald’s is our Wi-Fi savior in France when we are out and about and need a connection on our phones. Every McDonald’s is equipped with unlimited, free, wi-fi.
Parisian Tex-Mex
We finished off the week with a visit to a local cinema where we were able to view “Terminator Renaissance” on a screen slightly larger than a home theater. They haven’t quite been able to adapt their ancient architecture to be friendly with the idea of stadium seating, unfortunately. Prior to the movie as we were looking for a restaurant we spotted an awning that advertised “Tex-Mex”. We couldn’t resist the idea of trying out a Parisian’s idea of Tex-Mex and were even more entertained when we got closer and realized that the name of the restaurant was the “Indiana Cafe”. Indiana Tex-Mex? The menu did have a surprising variety of traditional Tex-Mex specialties. While we waited for our chimichangas and enchiladas we created the story of the owner in our minds. Larry and I both imagine that (s)he either went to college or did an exchange year at Purdue, and there was some Tex-Mex restaurant nearby (Chevy’s?) that (s)he loved so much, (s)he decided to bring it back to Paris and open his/her own place.
We are off in the morning to Normandy. This weekend is the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings and we would like to be there to pay tribute to the thousands of Americans, British, Canadians, and others who paid the ultimate price and are still there, never to return home.
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