France

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PARIS TO PROVENCE:  Fri, 3 May 2002 07:01:32

    Subject: Clinton visits France

Hello all,

As we type this, Bill Clinton is sitting to our right.  He claims, jokingly, to be "Clinton's brother," but the similarity is unbelievable.  Michael asked if he was from Texas based on the accent, but do you know what the answer was?  You guessed it, Arkansas.  His wife (?) is twenty-five years old and appreciates him and his wacky sense of humor.  He mentioned that there aren't too many McDonald's in Europe (there are, actually), and other than that... he just looks EXACTLY like Clinton.  Bill.

Ahem.

We spent about nine days in Paris, staying at a friend from Brown's place.  Her apartment was wonderfully located, as we had all the necessities within a two-minute walk: crepes, boulangeries and patisseries, sex shops, and the metro.  Well... the sex shops weren't really that important, just an added luxury.

For a bit of mood lighting, we'll describe the scene outside Hamoutal's apartment each morning.  We would go downstairs and find next to the door one of three women: Lady of the Night A would be sporting a tight black mini skirt and a tight black shirt showing off her bosoms and much much more.  She was, we are guessing, about 65 years old, and quite portly.  She had red hair and fiery lipstick.  Lady of the Night B didn’t wear much.  Lady of the Night C had a huge fur coat and a little poodle, and was always turning around to talk to people who didn't seem to be there.  It was odd.

We saw various museums including the humongous Louvre, which has to be the biggest museum in the world.  We decided ahead of time to concentrate on only a few areas, but it took about a half an hour just to find that wing of the building.  We walked through "large format French history painting" for fifteen full minutes.  The Mona Lisa was fun to see, especially since it was just sitting on the wall amongst other paintings.  We noticed this phenomenon throughout France.  Famous paintings sit on walls next to less famous paintings, so that you find yourself walking around and all of a sudden saying, "oh, here is Starry Starry Night" or "I think I studied that painting for three weeks in my art class" and finding it totally and completely normal. So we walked and walked and saw only 2 incredible exhibits out of a million, and still we spent six hours there.  It was great!

For the second time this trip, we ran into someone we know!  At Musee d'Orsay, after looking at hundreds of beautiful paintings, all famous of course, we bumped into a friend from high school/BBYO who we haven't seen for five years.  What fun!  We even lassoed her into going out to a nice dinner with us so we could taste her food, too.  Michael strategically waited until she ordered so that he could get something different, and was thus able to taste coq au vin (traditional dish of chicken in wine sauce) AND roast lamb done yummily well.  It was one of those insane French meals that just keeps on coming, with creme brulee to top it all off, and an after-dinner walk to make sure you are still alive and breathing in the morning.  We feel once again that we are eating our way through France, with intermittent sight-seeing.  Oh, by the way, we saw the Eiffel tower, and we went all the way to the top.  Its a really scary ride up there, as you are lifted on the inside of the tower for miles and miles up.

Miles and miles.

Ahem.

About the bakeries, we'll just say that the postcards and romantic photographs are no exaggerations.  Baguettes, croissants, pains au chocolat, brioches, tartlettes, tortes, quiches, the list goes on, as does our stomach.  The French really do have something special in them because we are eating and growing.

We also visited the catacombs which are really spooky.  There, you can have the pleasure of seeing piles of all too organized bones and skulls that were removed from overflowing Parisian cemeteries.  The spookiest part is the quantity.  After about five minutes of wandering through bones, we thought it was time to climb back up... but when we finally emerged from the underworld, it seemed that we were quite a ways from where we went in.  We must have spent about 1 hour walking underground among the dead. 

Other than that, we spent a lot of time walking around, seeing museums, gardens, farmers markets (where we ate lots of cheese, of all sorts), galleries, churches, synagogue, river, stores and people.  Ahhh... a week in Paris!

We finally left the comfort of Hamoutal's apartment and headed out on our own for Dijon, "one of the loveliest provincial capitals in France."  Out of all the provincial capitals we've seen, this was certainly the nicest.  And the least nice.  And the only one.  But all things being equal, differentially speaking in a certain manner, we liked it very much.

We bought mustard.  7 little jars of it.

Dijon is one of those places that makes you feel good to be alive.  The streets are made of cobble stone, the houses are old, peeling, and all have romantic balconies, the pastry shops are loaded with delicious goodies, and the people are friendly.  All in all, we had a great day walking about, enjoying the city.  Still, its not a place that you can stay in for a long time, so we took a day trip to Beaune, a tourist wine town where we did nothing but walk about the nice streets.  Finally we caved in to the call of the Little Tourist Train.  Under no outside pressure, no force of any sort, we voluntarily bought tickets for the "Little Tourist Train."  For forty-five minutes, we rode around Beaune, stopping at places we'd already walked to, listening to French tourist commentary, and then riding on.  In our defense, the picture on the pamphlet was of the little tourist train riding through idyllic vineyards with rolling green hills behind.  We did actually ride through a vineyard for five minutes.

And so it came to be that we almost missed our train back to Dijon where we were to pick up our luggage and get on a connection to Lyon and onward to Avignon.  So we leaped off the moving Little Tourist Train (picture James Bond leaping from one fighter jet to another -- it was that dramatic as we lifted the little chain-seat-belt and hopped out of the "moving" train while the other passengers watched in shock... after all, the French commentary was mid-sentence!) and ran for 15 minutes and arrived in time to pee and catch our breath before the train arrived.  Lucky us, we arrived in Avignon.

To greet the storm.

Which rained on us as we walked to our hotel.

Today we saw the Palais du Papes, a really incredible palace-fortress, that looks exactly as one would imagine a Middle Ages fortress palace to look.  Big, made of stone, with beautiful frescos, and many huge rooms.  We walked towards the famous Pont d'Avignon, but decided to save our three euros for the "best churros in Provence" and looked at the bridge from the riverside.  The churros were quite good, by the way, and the guy who sold them to us got so excited that he forgot we were in France and said, "Gracias! Bueno callentes!"

And that is how it came to be that we were seated next to Bill Clinton, the president we all love to hate and love to love.  he is traveling incognito, so if you see him, don't say, "Hey Bill!"  He'd prefer you to call him "Albert" and talk to him as if he is an "architect."  Riiiight. Architect.... Ha ha ha ha.  we're on to you Bill.  We're on to you and your slippery games.  Slippery indeed.  Riiight.