We have arrived (Firenze)!

We have arrived. Thank you Piero and homeexchange. No issues with travel. We both slept on both flights, ptl! We have had a couple of small hiccups thus far: our apartment is a little further from downtown than we expected; the sheets weren't on our bed; and the apartment definitely has a stench of bachelorhood (lesson for next time- only exchange with couples. Well ,for next time maybe only exchange with a couples and a baby). Anyway, we have arrived.

Day 1: Arrived at 2pm. Took a cab to our apartment (about 30 mins), got settled in the apartment. 

Then we headed out for an early dinner. We walked around the Duomo, Uffizi, Baptistry and then settled on a small trattoria for pasta and a quick to bed. We drove the car down from our apartment to Piazza Michelangelo and then walked down to city center. It took us a little while to figure out how to get the car moving (had some trouble putting the car in reverse) and then we had a little bit of trouble getting down to P.M. (tiny scary streets, and just generally getting lost). From P.M. to city center it was a steep walk down and then obviously the way back was a steep walk up. The dinner was fine, not excellent, but fine for a first, sleepy night out. And then miraculously, the car ride back was super easy- no wrong turns, no backing up, easy parking, wawho! 

Stayed up until 10:30 preparing for church day tomorrow and crashed after reading two paragraphs (not even a whole page) of my book.

 

SBR and WDR +1 going to Firenze

Here we go. T minus 16 days to go. We fly into Roma and then a small plane to Firenze to stay at Piero's place (homeexcange.com).

Three books have arrived from the library to begin to sculpt our trip:
Eyewitness Travel Guides
The Food Lover's Guide to Florence
The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Biographical Novel of Michelangelo

We've got a lot of reading to do and even more Italian to learn!! 

Paris Superlatives

1. Funniest thing to say that we don't know it's meaning, or if it means anything "Qu'est qu'il ce pass?? Voila!!"

2. Best dressed Vespa: LX50

3. Best breakfast food: still warm baguette monge from Eric Kayser with Bonne Maman jam and/or Nutella.

4. Cheapest dinner: 14 euro, 2 take-out boxes of pasta from Mezzo and a 4 euro bottle of wine from Monoprix.

5. City of Light Brightest Light award/most like the gestapo: Bateaux-Mouche night cruise.

6. Funniest imitation: Drake's Julia Child "Bonjooour!!"

7. Favorite Arrondisement: tied: 5th and 6th.

8. Best flea market purchase: vintage Texier messenger bag

9. Favorite indoor museum: L'Orangerie

10. Favorite outdoor museum: Rodin's garden

11. Weirdest outdoor museum: Marie-Antonette's Ferme at Versailles

12. Sketchiest person in French history: Marie-Antoinette

13. Best local dinner: Rotisserie Beaujolais

14. Biggest snafoo with the home exchange: not knowing the code to their front door when we arrived.

15. Best idea ever: www.homeexchange.com

16. Most favorite activity: riding bikes everywhere!

ps: Books we read while here: Loving Frank, Lindberg, A Moveable Feast (highly recommended to anyone staying the 5th or 6th arrondisments!)

Fou for France

It's official, we're fou about France...at least Paris! It's been a funny couple of days--most Parisiens returned from holiday at the beginning of this week and the traffic got increasingly worse as the week went on. And then this morning, low and behold, we went to our neighborhood market and everyone was American! Maybe a Labor Day influx? SO, we're a little confused but we just love this place. We think we can recreate it in New York but we have a small list of things it'll take to live the dream: 1. A Vespa, preferably a used PX125 or LX50 but we'll take anything, 2. An apartment in the Village, near the river, 3. Really amazing and cheal restaurants that offer house wine, 4. A Nespresso machine , and 5. Legal drinking in all city parks.....that's it!

The last few days have been so fun, surpisingly relaxed; since we've been here for 10 days, we were able to do everything on our "must-do" list pretty early on and that left us about four days to repeat some parks and museums, see Giverny, walk from Montmartre across the city back to our apartment, and eat some great food.

A brief recap: Tuesday we saw Sainte Chapelle which is jaw-droppingly delicate and beautiful. I don't know what the French were thinking when they built the Palais de Justice around it, but

even without direct sunlight, the windows are still awe inspiring. That night we set out to find David Leibovitz's favorite creperie, Cafe Breizh in the Marais, which was closed! It was the second night in a row that we were stood up by a creperie, so we rode our bikes back home and looked

up his second favorite, which was a hike to the 11th Arrond. Not bad, but not our favorite, although they served delicious Breton cider (we consumed about a liter!).

We visited Giverny yesterday and it was GORGEOUS! We were both pleasantly surprised at the beautiful gardens and how fun the day was. We rented bikes in Vernon and rode through the countryside to Monet's house and had a picinic. Could have sat in the garden forever, and it was so fun to see the waterlilies in full bloom after seeing his Nympheas at L'Orangerie (and Drake really loved seeing Japanese tourists on le pont Japonais, I think it was his high of the day).

Then last night we were treated to a special

dinner (thanks Mom and Dad!) and chose to go to Clos des Gourmets, a restaurant near the Eiffel Tower whose 26 year old chef trained with Alain Ducasse and Guy Savoy and picks the ingredients for the menu from the markets daily. Highlights were meeting a French-American couple sitting next to us who own a French restaurant in Phoenix (they helped explain the menu and paid us the highest compliment of the trip--they thought we were British!!), Drake's incredible "Tuna Cooked and Raw" (a piece of seared tuna and a pile of tuna tartare with some sort of ginger reduction something sauce), and the broth in my mussels--butter, raisins, mint, and un peu de creme. We ordered dessert wine and got Cognac instead which was interesting, but over all a fabulous and memorable dinner in Paris!

Un reservation!

I just made my first fully French reservation on le telephone for a very special dinner tomorrow night at Clos de Gourmet near the Eiffel Tower...and I'm so excited I just had to blog about it.

It's rainy here today, Drake took the train to Versailles this morning and went for a long run through the gardens. I took the train to the airport and met Prescott Nadeau's fiance, Sarah, while she waited for her train! She is so lovely, and is on her way to Brest to teach English for the year. And we're about to go Sainte Chapelle and one more swing through Mu. D'Orsay. Tonight, crepes in the trendy Marais!

A Moveable Feast

Today: The Louvre. (or, Da Loovra, as Drake likes to say) Well... it's still huge! And the Mona Lisa...is still small and surrounded by bullet proof glass, Japanese tourists, and lots of other people with cameras (what does one do with a picture of the Mona Lisa?). But the rest of the museum, at least the tiny chunk that we bit off today, is just fantastic. Botticelli, DaVinci, David, unnamed Roman sculptures, I.M. Pei even, one masterpiece after another, and another, and another! But fortunately, our pain au chocolates didn't last too long and we had to retreat to the Tuilleries for a picnic before we imploded with too much art.

Having paid respect to the Louvre, and having four days left, we felt a little bit lighter on our feet and the rest of day was spent reading and napping in various parks and our apartment. We stumbled (literally, on our bikes) upon the English bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, which was started by US expat Sylvia Beach, who published the first edition of Joyce's Ulysses and was a good friend to many of the "Lost Generation" writers in Paris. I needed a new book (just finished Loving Frank--the end? Oh my goodness!! Did not see that coming) and picked up Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, his memoires about his time in Paris in the '20s. It's a really fun read, he writes all about our neighborhood. Anyway, we love this little place!! We have some rain in the forecast and would love to spend an afternoon there.

One thing we're trying to do is not eat at anymore restaurants with any English in the menu...and it's proven to be harder than we thought, both to find these restaurants (most are still closed for August; hello France, it's basically September today) and to then translate the French menu. But we had a wonderful meal tonight at Bistro Mazarin in the 6th arrondisement, with a fun but chic local feel and our first pommes frites of the trip! And then for the 2nd night in a row we went to Ile Saint Louis searching for crepes and came up empty handed! But this time we had ice cream instead, from Berthillon, the first "glacée" in France. YUM.

The formidable Wedding Feast at Cana, and the back of Drake's head.

Here, in Napolean III's apartments, it was time for faire du manger.

Place de St. Germain-de-prés...just love the bright red geraniums everywhere.

Self-timed shot so we have proof of our time reading in a Paris park, to include in our memoirs...

Today was a great day. We finally ventured to the Right Bank! Some highlights in pictures:

Port de Vanves Flea Market: Chose this "smaller, low key" market over huge Clingancourt, but over 200 vendors didn't feel small to us! I bargained for a leather Texier messenger bag (love it!) and Drake got some great postcards of Charles Lindberg (about whom he is reading at the moment).

Walked through through the Tullieries after lunch and tea at A Priori Thé, then rode our bikes up Ave. Champs-Elysses and rode back down Rue Faubourg-Saint Honoré to look at the closed couture shops (sadly, we were forced to window shop, as it was Sunday).

Look who Drake found!

Monet at L'Orangerie, my favorite museum so far.

Beautiful gardens at Palais Royal.

We think we're going to have to tackle the Louvre tomorrow...but only for a quick trip to say hi to Mona. And maybe Musée Cluny/Moyen Ages? Can't believe we've been here almost a week, and Friday seems too soon!