Faire du Veló dans la Ville

(Biking in the city)

We got a nice night and crossed off one of the items on our touristy Paris list, a bike tour.  Paris is filled with cyclist which is kind of nuts considering how people drive here.  Lanes are a very fluid thing I don't mean changing between them, I mean actually lanes.  On the same block you can see a single car, two cars side by side, or some very pushy third car driving across, lanes are not marked.

So we meet up at the South corner of the Effile Tower with the Fat Tire Bike Tours for their 7:30 evening ride.  No reservations, once they get 20 people for a group they just call in another guide for the next 20, we were group seven of the night.  For those of you who followed my blog last summer and remember my My bike ride to Calf Pasture Beach post you will realize how far I have come, that I was up for a bike ride through the city streets.

Getting ready to head out, learning about Ninja Mode and Domination Mode... ie how not to get mowed down in traffic.  I chickened out and got the girl bike so I wouldn't worry about crashing while stopping the bike at intersections. No helmets were issued, Paris does not do helmets, but I did get this snazzy vest.

Max our tour guide

Despite Max being a Parisian the tours are done exclusively in English.  Max was adorable in his frenchiness, and his english was excellent and heavily influenced by the other American and Australian guildes. A lot of french that speak english well often speak with a strong British accent.

Daniel has his jeans rolled up that is how you know he is a for serious cyclist.

And we are off.

We ended up riding from the Eiffel Tower down to Notre Damn and Isle de City, where we stopped for ice cream, this is not exactly an intense ride. Then the Louvre and some of the bridges.  I laughed that we got to take a tour of our own neighborhood, but it was nice to have all the historical facts that we have missed out on not doing much in the way of tours but just living here. 

We were on Pont de Artist for one beautiful sunset.

I'm safety vest and I know it

As part of the bike tour we took a boat tour down the Seine for an hour during which they served us a bunch of wine, really not a serious ride.  Max happend to be pushing the wine making us feel guilty that he would have to carry it back if we didn't drink it, we weren't exactly a hard sell.

Because you know you love them.

Daniel remounting his bike after our booze cruise. 

 I shared  little hesitation about getting back on the bike after a few drinks and one of the other girls was like it's fine don't worry. I then explained how I was only a year back on a bike after a 10 year hiatus, she got a little concerned and offered a few suggestions about refinding your balance... worked out fine. 

Visible at night... check.

We made friends with Paul on the tour.  He was by himself as his wife was at the hotel watching their baby, the plan was next night they would switch, we suggested a bike basket.  And of course we stopped for another Eiffel Tower photo opportunity, you can't prove you are in Paris with out it.

Bike station at Fat Tire at the end of the day.

Getting in a few minutes to midnight we were the last group in, which was thankfully not my fault.  I rode at the middle if not the head of the pack the entire night.   The key to dealing with traffic seems to be just don't care, you stick your hand out they won't hit you.  I don't know if that is true individually but it does seem to be true for when there are 20 of you.  

I had a great time and felt quite confident in my cycling skills, like I said huge jumps from last summer. 

Bastille Jour (July 14th)

(Bastille Day) 

Except the French don't call it that 14eme de Juillet, think of it as France Independance day or July 4th ten days later. I am rambling a bit .... Viva la France!

We kick started our proud French Day with waking up late and catching the tail end of the military parade.

Tank!

So Military parade not half as fun as The Gay Pride Parade ... not even a quarter as fun.  It was a very interesting experience The military vehicles rolled down the street in close to silence at times, not much cheering or clapping.  We were too late for the horses and guys with pointy Napoleon hats and swords, but were in time for the tanks, armored jeeps and... dump trucks? 

Swarms of people.

After a french picnic of a baguette, cheese and ham in the park, which seemed to be completely void of frenchmen, we stumbled upon some military in front of the Panthon a few blocks from our apartment.

Military band

We stood for a while and enjoyed a medley of Michael Jackson classics such as Thriller and Billy Jean and then some Gaga.  But there wasn't just music there were toys too...

Please not the child behind the big gun.

All the military vehicles from the parade had driven out into the community for show and tell and touch.  There were about four different war vehicles civilians were allowed to climb on and play with.  So I .... got on a tank!

I'm on a tank!!!

There was no order, no lines if you just hoped on where you could find a spot, the soliders even gave you a hand up or lift down as needed.

Note the awesome beret.

Driving a Tank!

We had a little time to kill before our evening Bastille Day event so we checked out the canal and surrounding area down in the hip 10th, think of it as the Brooklyn of Paris.  Saw more tanks chilling as jungle gyms for the day.

A poor man's Seine.

After a crepe snack, seemed appropriate given the day we headed down to the Eiffel Tower to watch the fire works along with the rest of Paris.

Sooo many people. 

 I do not know how many people were there my only guess it was measured in tens of thousands.  The crowd at the military parad wasn't as impressive any more.  We brought a blanket to sit, what a laugh when we arrived 45 minutes there we were jockeying a place to stand... sit... HA.

Getting Ready...

BOOM!

The theme of the show was 70's and 80's but we were surprised to hear 70's and 80's Disco Music.  The show opened with "It's Raining Men" and ran the gamut of "Do the Hustle" "YMCA" "Last Dance."  Surprisingly no Cher. 

There were a few french songs but mostly English songs, which we found quite funny.  I was really excited by the pictures our little point and shoot was able to capture.

So Pretty.

The crowd disembarking after the display was unreal, I can only imagine that is what it is like after the ball drops in Time Square.  Traffic did not move as people cover the street in every direction.  

Fun Day ... Viva La France!

Vacances Vacance, Deux Partie Antibes

(Vacation Vacation, Part two Antibes)

The second half of our Vacation Vacation was a trip to the French Rivera, might as well see the namesake of the Red Neck Rivera. 

View from the beach.

In transit we were stuck carrying 5 bottles of wine in our very small luggage  through all our public transit transfers, that will teach to shop after wine tasting.

Antibes is a Greek town and has considerably more rock wall cliff than sandy shores. Luckily our bed and breakfast, which was adorable in every possible way, was a two minute walk to one of these small beaches. 

Me on the beach.

Two mornings in a row we woke up to croissants on the patio then headed down to our little piece of sand.  I read a lot and Daniel swam a bit.  The French beaches are a scattered mix of topless and topped.  Yes I joined into the topless sunbathing for about 30 minutes and yes that was ample time for me to get a sunburn, sorry no picture.

He is a picture of Daniel's sunburn instead

In the afternoons and evenings we walked around the old city, which certainly earned its name.  I know I have said it before but wow things are old here.  The entire thing just looked like a film set waiting to be used as a period backdrop, any period, any period at all. 

We got very lost one night and walked out of touristy land into possibly stabby lanes, which were still beautiful ivy covered painted window shutters.  We ended up getting lost in the same street even cutter in the da time. 

Cute either way.

Our B&B served cocktails in the courtyard every afternoon and we chatted with the other guest. 

How every day should end.

The super cute courtyard behind the beer.

Our last night we took one of our wine tour wines out on the beach and enjoyed on the sand as we looked out on the light up shore. 

Our Provence wine on a Rivera beach, good day.

This was the most successful picture of about 6 we tried to take ... after finishing our wine.

  Despite walking ourselves to death most evenings, we had a very nice relaxing couple of days. Oh and did I mention we ate some seafood.

Mussels!

Sea food! Ok I can't tell you everything that was on our platter.

My frenching has been doing much better, I have even stepped up and lead the discussion with servers as a few points.  I bought a dress from a sales lady that spoke little English, we made it work but Daniel definitely had to work as a translator between us, even when I was speaking in French.  But it was a fairly amusing experience for all three of us. And I got a cute “gathering lavender in the fields of Provence in the 1940’s” feeling dress.  Soon to be photographed I hope.

Au revoir à la Plage. (Good bye to the beach)

Vacances Vacances,Une Partie Avignon

(Vacation Vacation Part one Avignon)

Daniel and I went on a vacation from vacation.  There was no way I was going to spend the summer in Paris and not go wine tasting and see the French Riviera.

AVIGNON!

We spent the last two nights in Avignon which is part of Provence.  Aside from the vineyards Avignon is known for being the Pope’s short time home sometime during the 1300’s.  Apparently another thing Avignon is known for that we were not aware of was hosting a huge Theatre festival during July.

We got off of an 8 hour train ride that involved getting up at 5:30 a.m. and  landing in the middle of a street clogged with actors hulking show flyers, performances in the street and every inch of every walk, fence sting hanging between wall and fence covered and recovered in play bills.

This picture doesn't really capture the unendingness that was the posters.

 We walked around the Pope’s Palace (read castle) and city wall, I mean like medieval wall with archer snippier posts, things are really old here.

Lavender Ice cream! And it matches my shirt!

We took and easy afternoon and laid in the park on the island across from the city.

  After a dinner we took a ride of the ferris wheel and enjoyed the street performers.  The novelty of street performers has long worn off for me but street performers during a theatre festival are really stepping up their game, there were break dancers, Asian silent magicians, native American chanters in full gear, belly dancers... not to mention all the weird get ups the actors were doing in hopes of luring you to their show.

You were just tripping over actors.

WINE TASTING!

 This is what we came for... wine.   Sans our own car and having no idea how you go about wine tasting we hired a guide Mike who runs a business called Wine Safaris.  

Mike is awesome. 

 Mike is Dutch so he spoke excellent English and taught us way more about wine than I ever thought there was to know.  He took us to vineyards and talked to us about the plants and how they grew, the south of France grows hardly any grapes I have ever heard of.  I also learned there are 7,000 kinds of grapes, we way under guessed.  Aside from being super informative, I did not realized we had signed up for an educational trip, he was very relaxed and a bit goofy so none of that wine pretentious feeling.  By the way there is a whole decoder ring affect looking at the label on the bottle of wine I learned enough to know thing and know there is no way I will be able to translate it later on.

They first winery we went to was super mom and pops, we meet the owner in a t-shirt and camo pants, made me laugh to realized vineyard owners are just farmers when you get down to it.  After a tour through the wine making room and a lesson in how you make wine, I now know how to make white wine from red grapes, and by "know" I think I know how other people make it but am probably wrong.  We sat down to a wine tasting in their dinning room while grandma was cooking lunch in the next room, sadly we were not invited to lunch, though she did come out for a quick chat with Daniel in french..

We showed a lot of self restraint and after trying 9 wines were not wasted. There was a lot of spitting, don’t worry it is classy spitting.  Sadly this vineyard does not distribute to the US so we bought a bottle of the good stuff and headed down the road.

Mike dropped us off at a lunch spot with amazing food and little English.  

I asked what the lunch of the day was and despite not understanding the response at all said sure.  It was a wonderful meat kebab with veggies and some odd but good melon and flavored ice thing.  Medium rare does not seem to be an option in French restaurant and when you say rare they mean it, but what can you expect from the home of the tartar.

Daniel ordered this amazing dessert again having no idea what it was until it showed up.  We liked it so much we asked the waitress to write down the name of it and I am going to figure how to make it once I figure out what it is.   I also believe I will be designing my back yard to look like this restaurant once I have a back yard again.

Our second winery was a bit more what I imagine with grapevine covered wall and lavender shutters.  We took a stroll through the wine cellar with all of its classic wooden barrels and fifth generation of wine making heritage. 

  We were slightly less restrained in our tasting of 7 more wines in the afternoon...  And ended up buying 4 bottles of wine.  Again not really set up to ship cases home, too bad we would have. 

We had a little extra time so Mike took us up to adorable medieval town on the mountainside.  

I swear Daniel came with me despite having photo proof.

Useful things I learned about wine:

All wine is improved from being decanted for a couple hours.

Wine does improve with aging in the bottle so long as they use an actual cork.

Slurping air when you drink it does make the taste more powerful

White wine is good to clean the pallet after red wine.

Wine will turn to vinegar within two weeks of opening it

Blended wines are absolutely as good as single grapes.

We saw a French show!

Daniel and I decided it would just be too much of a shame to miss out on seeing theatre when we had stumbled on a theatre festival in France.  After the wine tour we sat down with the monster show guide and shifted through the 107 theatres each with their half dozen to two dozen different performances for something that night that we stood half a shot at understanding.  Luckily there was a key for shows not French speakers could follow.  Editing out the concerts and dance pieces we were left with about half a dozen “theatre” performances.  We debated a while between the performance piece and a play we figured out would be in French and finally decided to man up and watch the French show.  The show “Rêveries d'une Jeune Fille Amoureuse” "Musing of a Young Girl in Love" claimed to be a visceral enough show to follow but had the midnight slot as it was for mature audiences. 

Our theatre was out of the clean cut tourist area and into what we used to be the heart of where the young live and drink in Avignon.  

The theatre, not as stabby as looks.

We had a quick conversation with the girl we bought our tickets form who asked us if we thought we would be able to understand the show since it was in French , our response “We are going to find out.” 

Show Response Short Version:

Very nude, sexually intese, very cool, artsy show in french.

Show Response Long Version:

The show was an incredible experience.  Reading the synopsis before hand, super helpful, we understood the story revolved around a young girl discovering her sexuality and a commentary about how society views sexuality.  We had figured there would be nudity given the time and subject matter ... and by the end of the show I had seen all half dozen of the female actress nude, so yes definitely nudity. 

The show was very intese sexuality charged piece that was as much performance artie as theatre.  Though I missed the dialogue about half the scenes were presented without dialogue, with heavy reliance on music, so it wasn’t that hard to follow the major themes and action of the story.  At times it was very raw and violent and other times were beautiful visual moments of love.  Despite some shaky tech elements, a performance art piece like that needs really sharp lighting and sound which is just hard in a space you are sharing with six other shows, it was a really moving piece of work.

We did catch up with the girl for a few minutes after the show and even spoke a few of the cast members.  Everyone was interested to know if we understood the show.  Which was hard to get a cross that we didn’t get the words but we got the show, missed the finer details but got the concept.  We didn’t hang out for very long, you hate to hold someone up after a show. We exchanged emails with the ticket girl, but forgot names, she is coming to NYC in August so who knows.

Figures we finally have a chat with a Parisian and forget to exchange names.     

It was a great experience and I am really glad we didn’t chicken out in going, I am very interested to read the script and figure out everything I didn’t get.

And that was Wine Country next ... the beach.

Nuit au la Musée

(Night at the Museum)

More specially a Private showing of the Tim Burton Exhibit at the Cinémathèque.

Several weeks ago when we attended the Reddit Beer/Birthday meet up and had a really fun evening with Ben and Shaun, Shaun invited us to a work event.  He works for Warner Brother's Paris office, they had arranged for a private showing of the Tim Burton exhibit after hours for employees and friends.  

Cool looking Museum.

Not only did we have the run of the exhibit to ourselves there was complementary drinks outside as the museum was closing down from their standard hours.  I ordered my champaign cocktail excited this was a french word I already knew just to hear a real french girl order and realized it might be a french word but we don't say it like the french.  The four of us chatted outside for about one drink, I felt so classy.  Skipped the picture since this was a work thing for Shaun I did want to seem so touristy.

I never knew Tim Burton was such an artist, the majority of the exhibit was his sketches and art.

Some of art was commissioned into 3D pieces like this guy, "Max the Sound Guy".

There were tour guides giving what I was sure was fascinating insight to some of the works but the tour was in french.  After a few minutes of trying to listen in I gave up and started reading the walls.  

Did you know Tim Burton worked for Disney? I sure didn't. Don't worry it was still odd creepy stuff, like this asian Hansel and Gretel that was being shown in the exhibit.  Super creepy and apparently done on a budget of $75 watching it.  I gave up after the first 5 mintues but the guys remained and continued to gaffa loudly at times.

Me next to some sweet Batman Drawings, 

The exhbit also included "Edward Scissorhand's" hand and costume, Pierce Brosnan's head for "Mars Attacks" and the super creepy head gear from the "Chocolate Factory."

Turns out aside from no one getting scolded we weren't really suppose to be taking pictures...oops, the tacky americans... at least we weren't the only ones ... photo takers that is.

We spent almost three hours in the exhibit and then headed to a brew pub.  Had the most amazing view over the skyline as we crossed the bridge.

The Frog Pub!  

A British Pub, the entire menu was in english except for the beer descriptions, the one thing we were ordering.  We enjoyed and hour of discussing the exhibit and once again comparing things you would think are the same between culture and are not.  They were shocked to find out strip clubs do work like in the movies and we were fascinated to know how one tips a stripper in a currency of  dollar coins. Sadly there is no coin garter purse like I was guessing. Proud ambassadors for the US.

The guys got a jug of beer which came with fruit flavored vodka shoots.  I was not paying attention when we ordered our flavors and mimicked the last order I heard which resulted in a cherry flavored shot.  Cherry is about my least flavored anything and it did taste like childhood cough syrup going going down, so one could not exactly call this an endorsement.  But all the excitement of surviving in another culture.

Daniel, Ben, and Shaun.

I remembered to request a picture before the night was out though everyone pointed out to me empty beer glasses make for a lame picture.  Really fun guys, hopefully there will be a chance to see them again.

Side Note: This time I remembered European guys do the check/kiss greeting and goodbye and was not surprised by it ...  like last time.