A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

I have arranged the photos below the cut to represent my experience walking through the town, entering the gardens, now looking at the entire view, now leaning in to inspect a single flower.

( Come walk through the gardens with me. )

I'll post photos from Monet's gardens tomorrow. They deserve a post all of their own.

These are all my photos, by the way. Don't look for great quality - I kept having to photograph in haste during the rare bursts of clear sky, then cram my camera into a ziplock bag and then into my purse, as it began to rain.

Oh yeah - I never got a chance to blog about this, but I saw the Tour de France! Story and photos below cut.

( Street scenes, pink skeletons, a terrifying mime, the Thinker, a building made of tubes, the Tour de France, and the beautiful handwriting of Napoleon )

Cut for images of pastries, cheese, the Seine by night, and some very unhappy tourists. Most of these were taken by my mom.

( Read more... )

I am posting from a net cafe in what I believe is em-h's old stomping grounds, near the Luxembourg Gardens. Great recommendation! I like this area a lot. On my way there I saw a patisserie about the siwe of a walk-in closet, with people lined up outside and new people walking up to join the line and walking out with little bags. I immediately joined the line, and got a very nice quiche lorraine, and a very light cheesecake gateau with raspberry sauce, garnished with jewel-like red currants. (They are sour and are mostly seeds.)

While I am not a fan of formal French gardens - they are a bit like geometry lessons in grass and flowers - the Luxemberg is a great place for a picnic, packed with benches and chairs, so I set up and ate there in front of a statue of some jolly Greek God and a meticulously pruned ellipsoid of mixed flowers with accents of Swiss chard. I had neevr before seen that as an orrnamental, but it's a pretty one with its red veins and great crinkled leaves.

I passed another patisserie with an extraordinary cake display of a chessboard chocolate and vanilla cake with chocolate chessmen on top. Inside, they had pastries labeled "tendresse de fruit3 and 3insolent fruits de bois." I expect those don't actually translate to "insolent fruits" and "a tenderness of fruits," but I shall keep my picturesque illusions until one of you corrects me. They also had whole candied fruits (confit de fruit) at outrageous prices, but that is how I learned that ananas is not banana, as I had assumed, but pineapple. I didn't buy anything there - way overpriced - but did note the presence of violet and Earl Grey macarons.

Can anyone who speaks French give me an idiomatic way of saying, "Can you please flip the egg over in the pan? I like the white to be cooked more." Or is that too outrageous a request? I like croque madames but I am tired of scraping off totally uncooked egg white. As for omelettes, I will never order one again. I do not understand the appeal of slimy uncooked egg white, but it seems people in Paris appreciate it a great deal. Or else I'm just unlucky.

Mom dragged me from cafe. Now posting from Kindle.

Tour bus en espanol. Guide tells us all about Louis Catorce. Do not actually speak Spanish. At Versailles, the deluge. Freezing cold. 55 degrees but extreme windchill. We switch to English tour but v amazing interior like Tokyo subway at rush hour. Obligatory tour then marches us all through garden. We are drenched and freezing. Umbrellas turn inside out. Funereal music plays. Mom says she feels like we are being marched to guillotine.

At mediocre tour lunch I drink several glaases of mediocre wine in hope of warming up.

More walking. Wine not helpful. Should have drunk more. Half of tour bails on seeing Marie Antoinette peasant village and sits in tour bus for hour and a half. Myself included.

Back in Paris we learn that Paul has purchses pricy theatre tickets for us. I am torn between preferring to go to bed and excitement. Moulin Rouge?!

No. He has kindly selected something in English. It is Mama Mia. The ABBA musical. He has also delegated his hadsome son to escort us. I look like a drowned rat.

At theatre we learn as curtian rises that Mama Mia has been translated into French. Songs included.

Forgot to mention that during lunch Paul started going on about how animals shouldn't be kept as pets, but should roam free; halfway through his rant a lady walked in with a mini schnauzer in her handbag, which she proceeded to feed from the table. Every now and then it barked as if to underline one of Paul's points.

Today I set out determinedly to find a Fench cafe to breakfast in, but the one I walked into turned out to be Le Pain Quotidien - a chain we have in LA. Oops. Will try again tomorrow.

Mom and a friend of hers, Judy, went to the Louvre. My favorite things: the Winged Victory of Samothrace, poised as if for take-off atop a flight of stairs and framed in a succession of arches, the gilded jewel-box interior of the Louvre, and a reconstruction of the Assyrian palace of Sargon, with immense stone bulls with wings and human heads. The Mona Lisa, in my philistine opinion, is not one of those works of art which gains a lot from being seen in person rather than in reproduction; that is probably a minority opinion, though, as it was absolutely mobbed.

The Louvre itself is an amazing piece of artchitecture, though the glass pyramid designed by I M Pei, while very nice from inside, is pretty weird from the outside, as if aliens landed for a visit and parked their spaceship.

After that, we went to an amazing pastry shop, where I had a pastry of soft/crisp almond macaron biscuit layered with raspberries and almond cream, and tried mom's chocolate macaron and Judy's pistchio strawberry pastry. Great stuff, worth the high expense.

It's cold and intermittently rainy, overcast; I packed completely wrong and will need to buy a long-sleeved shirt. A chic, Parisian long-sleeved shirt!

Tomorrow: Versailles!

I have been having odd luck with French CDs. My first set turned out, despite being labeled as a beginning, learn in your car course, consisted of long French conversations followed by questions about them in English.

My second set is a normal learn in your car course, with words and phrases spoken in English and then translated into French. Just what I need. However, while the English speaker is a man with a rather flat inflection, the French speaker is a woman who says everything in the tone of horrified inquiry usually represented in print with the punctuation marks "?!"

I have been imagining what could possibly prompt such exclamations as "Madame?!" "Monsieur?!" and "Ou est il?!" I fill them in as I attempt to learn in my car.

"Madame?! Did I say something which implied that I wished you to fondle me there?!"

"Monsieur?! Are you the spy we have been searching for?!"

"The treasure we stole from the royal chambers! Where is it?!"