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Seine at dusk |
For the summer of 2011 we had hoped to visit Egypt, then the Arab
Spring hit the headlines. OK we thought, so maybe Japan? Then the tsunami hit.
Our third choice was Iceland—and of course—the volcano erupted. I am not
exaggerating. We finally settled for a nice, safe trip to England that summer. Similarly,
a couple of summers ago our top travel choice was Istanbul. But again, we
waylaid our plans after occasional bombings were reported and the Turkish
border towns grew increasingly dangerous. So by last November we thought we’d
just pick another traditional European standard for our vacation, just to be on
the safe side.
Because 2015 had been a busy and stressful year for me, for the first
time in perhaps seventeen years I hadn’t traveled out of the country in the
summer for my much needed annual reboot. That year the care situation for my elderly
father demanded all my attention. But by fall, being overdue for a change of
scenery and feeling more secure that my father’s care was in good hands, when
my usual traveling companion suggested that we spend Christmas in Paris I was
quick to jump at it. We started planning immediately, then briefly reconsidered
when my father passed away in October. However, by November we’d decided that
we needed that get-away rather badly—we
purchased our tickets and booked a flat near the Pompidou Center. Four days later, all hell broke loose in
Paris. So we weren’t really too shocked that we’d actually booked our vacation
to a country in the midst of crisis – somehow it seemed ‘the will of the Gods’.
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Police headquarters |
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Soldiers in the Tuileries |
I’d only traveled to Europe once before in the winter (if you
don’t count snow in London in April). And although I’d been to Paris several times
previously, it was only for brief summer visits. This was a
chance to see the city ‘off season’—if there is such a thing—and to dig in bit.
Given the circumstances, it was now also a chance to see Paris with groups of
militia strolling the Tuileries and down the
Champs-Élysées.
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Statue in Tuileries |
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Pond at Versailles |
By the time we arrived it appeared that the horror of the terrorist attack had
abated, or was at least being willfully forgotten. Parisians were living their
lives in the usual fashion—literally—chic scarves swirled around their necks
and baguettes tucked under their arms as they scurried down the rain-slicked
streets.
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Near St. Michael |
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Carousel in square adjacent to the Hôtel de Ville |
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Christmas market near Eiffel Tower |
All over the city public squares hosted carousals filled with
squealing children, while onlookers contentedly nibbled their hot chestnuts from paper cones and
sipped their mulled wine. Mulled wine was sold everywhere. It was hot, spiked,
and festive, and it made the cold walk home after dark positively pleasurable.
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Winter light in Paris |
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View from the Sacre Coeur |
The light quality in winter in Europe's northern countries is hauntingly
delicate—the sun never reaches the top of the sky—just skims along the horizon
casting long shadows and shards of light that flicker through the branches lining
the city streets. I hadn’t yet read
A Movable Feast when I visited Paris last
December, but later when I did, I understood
Hemmingway’s descriptions of the
city on a much more visceral level.
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Notre Dame |
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Pont Alexandre III |
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Holiday decorations in front of Hôtel de Ville |
Fleetingly, we felt Parisian—because of our
flat, our forays round the corner to the market for supplies, our home-cooked
meals with a baguette and a bottle of Beaujolais, our miserable French colds, and
because through it all we saw the city’s vulnerable post-crisis underbelly. Even though it was just ten days, we got at least a glimpse of life as a
resident—and that was a memorable vantage point.
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Christmas dinner |
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Champs-Elysées |
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Cartier on the Champs-Elysées |
Yet the Fates weren’t finished with me. I was invited to take a French
wine scholar program across the winter after our trip. It was an intensive program, but
try as they might, they couldn’t make me absorb all the minutia I should have
(nor did I do back-flips or triple pirouettes on the exam—in fact, I failed, but
I excelled at the wine tastings that accompanied the study sessions!) Sadly, my
companion’s father had also passed away by the time June rolled around. So when
it was suggested that we take our battered psyches, the tidbits of newfound
knowledge and our excited taste buds and head back to France for the summer, we
were on-board. We took the non-stop to Paris…again (the
only way to fly)! But we traveled around France as a foursome this
time, in pursuit of regional French wines and cuisine, a deeper understanding
of French history, and some mental solace. And one of the perks of traveling with a foursome was splitting the costs of some upscale, comfortable and well situated flats, while still paying a reasonable price per person. Our flat in Paris, though petit,
was very well appointed and in the heart of Hemmingway’s haunt—St. Germain.
Paris
in the summer is its own animal, even without extra complications. Our
complication was arrival on the day the World Soccer championships were to open
in Paris—to peak security—yet again (not to even mention the garbage and pilot
strikes, the state worker protests and the waning flooding of the Seine). Ah
Paris! It looked at times a bit like a war zone.
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Seine, after the flood |
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Eiffel Tower with soccer ball |
But we ran madly around the
city; circumnavigating the fences surrounding the Eiffel Tower, locating the
ever-elusive Bastille, being enraptured by stained glass of the Sainte-Chapelle,
sampling the best gelato in Paris, and crossing through a protest march that had
just been subdued with water cannons and tear gas.
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Sainte-Chapelle |
Getting from Paris to Alsace wasn’t difficult, but navigating our
escape from Strasbourg after arrival was a challenge. It really shouldn’t have
been. We did have Siri along with the four adults in the car. However, about ten
kilometers outside the city, we realized we were heading back toward Paris. Siri
helped us correct by turning us around in circles several times until it occurred
to us that the same landmarks were going by repeatedly. We finally just shut
her up and pulled out the damned map. At this point it began to rain and by the
time we’d passed Strasbourg going the other direction, a cacophony of giant
hailstones pelted the car, leaving us almost blind on the road. But within an hour we’d found our
way into the quaint medieval Germano-French burg of
Ribeauvillé, where we’d
booked a lovely flat in a renovated farmhouse with a private courtyard, smack
in the center of town.
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Main drag in Ribeauvillé |
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The Cheval Blanc restaurant in Ribeauvillé |
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Church tower in Ribeauvillé |
Because Alsace has been straddled between German aggression and French interests
for the last thousand or so years, it feels more Bavarian than French. Tidy medieval villages are nestled below stone remnants of the old feudal system
that are perched on the peaks of the Vosges range overlooking the valley.
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Castle ruins above Ribeauvillé |
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View of Ribeauvillé from the vineyards
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Old well in Riquewhir |
Vineyards
are spread across every available plot of land, and wine production is perhaps the
most lucrative industry of the region. The whole valley is romantically green
and the Alsacian white wines are simply like nectar.
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Vineyards |
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Carved sign in Ribeauvillé |
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Castle ruins |
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Hugel tasting room in Riquewhir |
Leaving Alsace was almost as stressful as coming. After a quick scoot
around Strasbourg, we headed back to the train station only to realize that we’d
looked at the wrong information for our train departure.
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Canal view in the old city in Strasbourg |
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Strasbourg cathedral |
We had nine minutes
from the time we’d entered the station to drop off the car keys and get onto
the train. Miraculously—like superheroes—we did it, but not without raising our
blood pressure a bit.
Lyon was the next stop, and was another city hosting the World Cup
soccer games. Because of the riots in Marseilles, security was out in force. Bars
were filled with drunken rowdies and crowds watched giant monitors—whooping and hollering in squares all over Lyon. And to top it off, Lyon’s annual
music festival was taking place during our stay. Amid all this and a parade in support of refugees, it was party central.
But at day's end we kicked up our heels with a bit of wine in our rather grand flat.
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Isabelle's flat in Lyon |
The city is full of quirky and
interesting museums. Guignol—roughly the ‘Punch’ of the French puppet theater—has
his own
museum there. The
Musée Miniature et Cinéma
not only houses impressive film set miniatures, but many other film artifacts.
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Stained glass of Guignol in action |
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Miniature set of the Café des Fédérations |
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Eating at the actual Café des Fédérations |
Lyon’s
printing museum was on our list, but was unfortunately closed on the days we had free. But museums—entertaining as they are—are not the only thing worth seeing in Lyon.
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Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière |
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View from the basilica |
However, the highlight of our
Lyon visit was perhaps a day of wine tasting with another redheaded French Vincent—a remarkably
knowledgeable vintner who founded
LyonWinetours and
conducted an insightful and varied tour through
Côte Rôtie and Condrieu.
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Côte Rôtie vineyards
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Old wine bottles of the Côte Rôtie and Condrieu region |
Vincent picked us up at our door and drove our group
of six in a minivan from Lyon proper, to the Côte Rôtie valley. We visited vineyards, observed him pruning vines, saw
first-hand the difference between organic and standard vineyard practices, (were
eaten by blood sucking beetles while observing), visited three vineyard tasting
rooms, tasted enough wine to make us silly, toured a small owner-operated wine
production facility, saw cellared casks, the bottling process, and best of all,
were served the most authentic and luscious French cuisine of our trip for lunch
in a small local café in Condrieu.
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Côte Rôtie vineyard |
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Wine production facility |
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Wine kegs in the cellar |
Our next stop was Avignon and although I’d spent a day there on a
previous trip touring the
Palais de Pape and roaming the city streets, I was unprepared for the accommodation we’d
blundered into. It was directly across the courtyard from the pope’s palace—with an unimpeded view of the palace from its front windows. It
was elegant, enormous, and air-conditioned!
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Our afternoon repast |
By mid-afternoon Avignon was blazingly hot, but we quickly discovered the glories of a spot of air-conditioning,
French cheese, and
rosé in our fabulous flat, and
repeated this ritual daily until we left southern France.
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Locals on horseback in traditional dress at the Palais des Papes |
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Old canal waterwheel in Avignon |
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Saint Bénezet Bridge |
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Eco suggestion |
From our digs in Avignon we also took two memorable
day trips; to Arles (residence of that other
French Vincent); and the
Pont du Gard.
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Front steps of the Roman arena in Arles |
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Roman ruins on Arles street |
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Raking the arena in Arles |
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Arles locals in traditional dress |
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Pont du Gard |
We then headed to
Collioure,
a charming, former fishing village, on the Mediterranean near the Spanish
border.
How we found ourselves in the perfect beachfront flat in the
most scenic spot on the bay is beyond me. We were flabbergasted. We had two lovely balconies over the beach and two floors of a charming property.
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Balcony view from our lovely flat |
The flat’s only
drawback was a lack of air-conditioning. But the breeze kicked up regularly
mornings and evenings, and with doors and windows open it was delightful. Besides,
when the heat of the day reached its zenith, we just stripped down to swimsuits
and walked a few feet from our door into the water. And for our amusement, from
our balconies we had a birds-eye view of the French Navy Seals
(or something on that order)—in training—storming the beach of
Collioure, where at this time of the morning only a few stalwart elderly locals lolled
about after their laps in the bay.
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Storming the beach |
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Morning drill |
They all co-mingled quite peacefully though,
and provided great morning-coffee entertainment. By the second day we'd joined lap-swimmers before breakfast, headed back to the water at mid-day, and again before dinner—just
ahead of feasting on local seafood.
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Historic fishing boats and town fortress in Collioure |
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Collioure charm |
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View of the bay in Collioure |
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Cobbled streets of Collioure |
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Seafood extravaganza |
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Harbor in Collioure |
Does life get much better than
that?
Our foursome split up after Collioure, two heading back to Paris for
departure, myself and my companion on to
Carcassonne—the authentically medieval
Disneyland of southern France. Carcassonne’s castle is the lure, and although
the castle and cathedral themselves deliver in spades, the castle is also
filled to the breaking point with commercialized shops, restaurants and
tourists.
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Carcassonne castle and bridge |
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The ramparts from below | |
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Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus |
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Medieval street below castle in Carcassonne |
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Carcassone below the castle at sunset |
My afterthought was that the castle would
be improved by making it a ‘living museum’ with shop space housing medieval
crafts and workers in period costume—on the order of Nova Scotia’s Fortress of
Louisbourg.
It would be no less popular, I dare say, and much more intriguing.
Finally, we were off again for Paris to bid our adieu to France. We dug our umbrellas
out of the bottom of our now overstuffed suitcases, donned jackets against the chilly
drizzle and finally managed to visit the gargoyles on the roof of the Notre
Dame and the Archeological Crypt Museum in the square below.
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Gargoyles keeping watch over Paris |
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View from the top of Notre Dame |
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Roman and medieval ruins below the Notre Dame square |
We skirted the
bars—still overflowing with obnoxious drunken soccer fans, ate at a cozy street café in
the rain, sampled more tasty gelato,
and watched the Paris sun set in our eyes again (thanks Judy, I think you’re
one of the reasons I came).
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Notre Dame cathedral at sunset |
Ten days after our departure the brutal attack in Nice took
place. Although I hadn’t really intended to boost the French economy in the midst of their national crises (or come
home seven pounds fatter), that’s just the way it fell out—but nonetheless I'm pleased to have supported France in any small way possible during perhaps its most trying year of recent times. It helped me heal, and I'm more than happy to help it heal.
Paris and the rest of France still charms, which is surely due to the French zeal for liberty, food, wine, their stubborn resistance to intimidation, and their highly developed artistic aesthetic. Even though
our two trips were bookended by tragic terrorist events, we still felt we’d
found a little bit of heaven in France.