Winter Wonderland in Paris

I’ve been hoping and looking forward to some snow in Paris and I finally got it!!! About a week ago it snowed in Paris....a lot! Enough that the snow stuck to the ground to create a bit of a winter wonderland here. And we absolutely loved it!!!

From talking to my colleagues, it sounds like it’s super rare to see the type of snow we saw (which lasted 3 days and of course has since melted). It started on a Friday evening and by Sunday, the city had a nice blanket of white.

Nate and I took a little walk around our neighborhood and down to Notre Dame and the river just to be out in it and enjoy Paris covered in snow. It was really quite beautiful!! I’m thinking that was probably our only snow for this season, at least to this degree, but I'll take it!! Paris est magnifique dans la neige!!!

First visitors of 2013

Happy 2013!  We were home for what always feels like a quick trip and had an amazing Christmas with family while also seeing a few friends.  Then we headed back to Paris to bring in the new year here with our new friends.  We celebrated at Robin and Dave’s place with a few other people and had a great time ringing in 2013.

We had just a quick week before my sister and her family came to visit.  And when I say her family I mean her husband and 1.5 (Michelle) and 4 (Cecilia) year old daughters.  It would definitely mean a house full but we were both excited to have all of them here!  We figured that we tested the waters a bit back in November when Kristine and Aaron brought Ethan so we were a bit more prepared to now have two little ones in our home.  

The family arrived on a Thursday and looked very excited to be off of a plane.  Everyone was a bit tired and after lunch, they all took a nap.  Well except for Cecilia who was wide awake and kept me company while I worked from home.  

We kept it simple that evening with dinner from our favorite handmade noodle place just a block from our apartment.  The next day John was off to London to visit a friend for the night and Nate and I were off to work.  So Julie had the two girls for a day in Paris.  From what I heard, it didn’t take them long to find the carousel set up near Hotel de Ville, just a 10 minute walk from our house, and which turned out to be a popular activity to return to throughout their stay.  They did a little more exploring near the house and then it was happy hour time.  As you’ve heard us say before, Nate and I love happy hour at our house.  I mean, who doesn’t love some wine, cheese and baguette?  

We decided to venture out for the evening and found a little brasserie in the Marais for dinner.  It was perfect.  Michelle was sleeping the entire time and Cecilia was so good!  We only took a quick walk after dinner and then it was time to get the girls home so they could actually be mobile and warm.  That’s right, did I mention that Julie and family are from the LA area and that it was probably no warmer than 45 degrees (and only getting colder) while they were here?  They were not used to this cold weather, that’s for sure.

On Saturday Julie and I and the girls ventured to the Jardin des Plantes.  I had never been here before and had read that it was a cool park with lots to do.  This was also the first metro ride for both Michelle and Cecilia which they absolutely loved!  Michelle loves trains and says “choo choo” when she sees one.  It’s so adorable.  So we grabbed some sandwiches and went to the park where we found a little playground.  It became quite cold though and we were ready for an indoor activity.  This jardin also has a children’s natural history museum which was perfect at the time.  They have lots of real looking animals on display and we were able to kill a couple of hours here before heading home.

By this time John had returned and it was happy hour again at our house.  We went out that night to a favorite little bistro in our neighborhood for dinner and then Julie and I and the girls came home while the boys had their night out.  It happened to be during playoffs so they could catch the first game at a bar.  

Sunday we decided was the day to go to the Eiffel Tower.  John had never been to Paris before so we thought it would be good for him to check it out.  Unfortunately we of course pick the one day to go to the Eiffel Tower that 340,000 people had gathered around it in protest of gay marriage.  So our trip there was quick, we got our pictures, Cecilia had a carousel ride and we headed off to see the Arc de Triomphe and then back to Notre Dame for mass.  

Monday Nate was back to work and I had both that day and Tuesday off to explore Paris with the Tannaci’s.  This time we checked out the Jardin d’Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne park.  It’s like a mini little amusement park and was so charming!!!  And since it’s the middle of winter it kind of felt like a ghost town.  I think we were one of maybe 5 families there.  It was a bit strange but kind of nice too.  They have a section with carnival rides but it’s so much more than that.  They have a little zoo, playgrounds, house of mirrors and more that we didn’t even get to explore.  When we walked in we didn’t make it much further past the rides as Cecilia wanted to check out all of them.  And did I mention it’s cold here?  Since we were all starting to get numb fingers and toes we headed to an Angelina’s cafe they had in the jardin for some of the best hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted.  Seriously!  Like pure melted chocolate.  It was the perfect way to warm up.  Before we knew it, they were closing up and it was time to meet Nate out at a cute French restaurant in the 6th for dinner.  And then it was mine and Julie’s turn to have girls night out while the boys took the little ones home.  

We were already at the last day of their trip which was going by way too quickly.  It was a mellow one with a little bit of shopping and of course one more carousel ride for Cecilia.  I think this was probably the coldest day of their trip and therefore it was hard to be outside too much.

We thoroughly enjoyed their visit and the house feels quite empty and quiet.  Now we are enjoying some snow on the ground and some winter soldes (sales).  It’s definitely winter time in Paris!

Champagne Please!

As you may recall, I went to Champagne back in March with my friend Lee and had a fabulous time.  Ever since then I’ve wanted to take Nate back so he could see it as well.  And now that we’re in Paris and it’s only 45 minutes on the train from here to Champagne, we have a great opportunity to go.  So two Saturdays ago, Nate and I planned a day trip to Champagne.  We went back to Rachel, our informative tour guide who now feels more like a friend.  She took us back to Wafflart-Briet where Nate learned all the details around making champagne while of course drinking their delicious champagne.  We got a little tour around the champagne house, which sits in a cute little village of no more than 400 people called Sacy.  After a nice light lunch there and purchasing a case of their champagne (would have purchased more too but a case was probably the most reasonable to take back on the train with us) we were off to Casanove.  

Casanove is a slightly larger champagne house where you’re able to take a tour and see their production area.  This was also interesting as of course it’s on a much larger scale than Wafflart-Briet.  After our tour and of course tasting there, we were off to Pommery to see a well known large champagne house.  After arriving there and stepping inside, you could definitely feel that it was basically all about marketing.  The tour takes you down into the caves, which is kind of cool but you don’t see anything that has to do with how they actually produce their champagne.  Of course at the end of the tour you get what starts to feel like your reward in the form of a glass of champagne.  

To be honest I actually liked the small champagne house much better than the larger ones like Pommery.  But I felt like we had to go check it out just to see what it’s all about.  I must say though, they did have a lovely champagne bubble Christmas tree outside which was quite fun!

A lesson in History

This post is a few weeks overdue, my bad people but it's a free blog so you'll just have to wait.  Now finally getting around to it, wanted to share one of our recent weekend adventures to Normandy.  As an American who has always had interest in World War II history and having been to a number of different sites and museums in Europe, I thought it important to visit the D-Day beaches and see this location in history.

As per usual, we of course planned our trip with Stacey and Alex who joined us for the weekend in Normandy.  The train trip from Paris to the town of Bayeux was about 2 hours or so getting us in to Bayeux around 8:00 that night.  Stacey and Alex didn't arrive until much later so Cleaver and I had a nice dinner at this little bistro near our hotel and pretty much called it a night.  After all it was a long week of work and we had a fairly early start in the morning.

Any morning at a French B&B will begin with a nice spread of croissants, coffee, and other pastries and our place in Bayeux did not disappoint.  After the 4 of us had a nice French breakfast, the tour guide we hired for the day picked us up and off we go.  We had hired a tour guide for the full day tour which was definitely the way to go.  On the itinerary, Sainte-mère-église, Utah beach, Omaha beach, Pointe du Hoc, the American cemetery and he also took us to this little church that had a part in D-Day as well as it had been set up as a makeshift first aid post.  While taking us to these various sites our guide offered lots of history, stories, and explanations about the invasion, all of it quite interesting.

With so much information and so much that we saw that day, it's difficult to share everything but I'll mention a few highlights.  First the beaches, both Utah and Omaha.  Having read so much over the years, seeing movies, and then finally standing there on the beach looking at the cliffs and the water, hard to imagine what actually occurred there.  Very surreal to stand there and consider how many people died and the significance of the event on so many levels.  Looking at for example Pointe du Hoc and seeing all of the holes in the ground caused by pre invasion bombing, seeing the German bunkers and fortification, and imagining what it must have been like for the soldiers there, all made for a fascinating experience to be standing in that same location.

Pointe du Hoc

Also of interest was Sainte-mère-église where many of the paratroopers that were first on the ground landed and as we found out then made famous by the book and movie "The Longest Day".  Most famously the square and church which had a few paratroopers get their parachute caught on the roof and today they memorialize this with a "dummy" stuck on the side of the church.

Last stop of the day was the American cemetery with 9,387 graves and a memorial at one end of the site.  Similar to the rest of the day, very interesting and very surreal to walk these grounds, a very worthwhile experience and highly recommended to be sure.  Not just the cemetery, but the entire day.

American Cemetery

A few other notes from the weekend, the town of Bayeux is a very cute small French town.  We had a wonderful dinner on Saturday night and on Sunday spent some time walking around.  Like most towns in Europe there is a giant church which was quite impressive and we also discovered they have a museum with a 70 meter long tapestry made in 1070 to tell the the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England which was kind of neat.

After walking around the town for a bit, we started to make our way back to the train station and back to Paris after a very interesting weekend of history.

Thanksgiving in Paris

With Jacalyn & Rio and Robin & Dave

Since we moved to Paris we’ve made friends with a few other American couples.  So this year for Thanksgiving we decided we should do a proper dinner and all get together to celebrate the holiday.  Our proper dinner would be on the Saturday after Thanksgiving though since well, we still have to work on Thursday and Friday here.  We decided that we would do dinner at our house and then move to Robin and Dave’s house for dessert.  We’re about 15-20 minutes from each other and we figured that a walk in between dinner and dessert would be good.  And our neighbors seem to be quite sensitive to noise coming from our place (we’ve had 2 knocks on the door since we’ve moved in...yikes!) so we figured it would be good to not keep the party at our house late into the night.  

We got our turkey from the Thanksgiving Store.  Yes, there is a store called the Thanksgiving Store here in Paris.  It’s tiny but it’s made for expats just like us that miss certain things from home, like cheddar cheese, ranch dressing, etc.  It’s good to know it exists for those emergency cravings.  

Anyways, we had Robin and Dave and Jacalyn and Rio, our American friends, and Haakon and Emily, Nate’s friend from work and his wife, over to our house for dinner.  Emily is French and Haakon is Norwegian so we introduced them to this awesome American holiday.  Everyone pitched in bringing a dish and we had a delicious meal!!!  It truly felt like the actual Thanksgiving holiday, just here in Paris, stuffed bellies and all.

We have so much to be thankful for, it would be hard to name it all.  But we are especially thankful to have found such great friends here in Paris.  

And now it’s already December and Christmas is just around the corner!  We are heading home for a traditional Christmas.....I can’t wait!  It will be nice to spend our time with family and see some friends.  It’ll be a quick trip (as they always seem to be) since we are heading back to bring in the new year here in Paris.  Again, just so much to be thankful for!!!

Loving the Girls Weekend in Florence

After our girls weekend in Florence in April was such a success, we had to find a weekend to do it again and that turned out to be two weekends ago.  It was perfect being that it was almost 6 months after our first trip.  We were ready for more Italian food and wine, shopping and of course girl time!  So I met up with my Zurich friends Friday evening and we got up early on Saturday but this time it wasn’t for Prada but for some culture!!  That’s right, we decided to learn a little bit about the history of this very charming city.  So we took a guided 3 hour walking tour around the city and got lots of interesting information about the history of Florence, visited a few churches, learned a thing or two about a few paintings and got ourselves all sorts of culturized.

Now that the culture piece was done, it was time to start shopping!  I think people don’t realize just how much shopping there is in Florence but you definitely have lots to choose from.  We shopped until dinner, all finding something we couldn’t live without.  For me I found a pair of these Italian leather boots that I definitely can't live without.  :)  

We had a wonderful dinner, lovely wine and dessert, chatted and caught up.  Sunday was pretty much more of the same minus the culture piece and before we knew it, it was time to part ways and say goodbye to Florence.  

I think we have officially created a tradition now out of our little girls weekend in Florence and we’ll be aiming to do this twice a year.  Next up, March where I look forward to another relaxing weekend with the girls.

Florence really is such a charming city and I realize how much I love it more and more every time I go back!

Like Mr. Miyagi said....it's all about balance

Sure, you remember when he told Daniel "Better learn balance. Balance is key. Balance good, karate good. Everything good. Balance bad, better pack up, go home. Understand?"  Or when metaphorically telling Daniel that the balance lesson “not just karate only. Lesson for whole life. Whole life have a balance. Everything be better. Understand?” (btw, did he finish every sentence with the word understand? Somebody IMDB that for me) 

And then they cut out that part where he says this also applies to wine.  This they don’t tell you on IMDB but I’m pretty sure it’s true ‘cause we learned on our most recent adventure, the key to great wine is balance.  This according to Les, resident innkeeper and wine merchant in the town of Blaye in the heart of the Bordeaux wine region. 

But before we get that far down the rue de Chateau - May have mentioned before, but there seems to be significantly more interest from friends and family in visiting Paris than there was in Zurich.  Maybe it's because the first year went so quickly and people didn't have enough time to plan, maybe Zurich is not all that exciting (which is fair) or it could just be that Paris is Paris.  The latter being the most likely reason and don’t worry, none of these offend us.

Already having had a few visitors since our arrival in July, up next visiting us straight from the mean streets of Alamo, CA are the Lamson's!  Coming for a little over a week and bringing a new element in the form of their 2 year old son Ethan, were our friends Aaron and Kristine.  On tap - adventures around Paris, a few World Series games, and a trip to Bordeaux.  Oh, and Cleaver and I had to find time to work along the way as well, save for a National holiday here in France on November 1 plus a second "bonus day" that everyone gets here.  (They get a lot of these apparently.)

To start, arrival Friday by the Lamson's and a fairly casual first night out for dinner, kept it short because they were trying to adjust to the time change and Aaron and I had a little something called Game 2 of the World Series to watch that night.  Aaron being perhaps an even bigger fan than I, no way we miss this.  Watching the games here means watching the next day and trying to avoid the internet all day long at work so you don't find out who won.  It's not as fun as it sounds, but hey, when you love your team you do what you have to do. Game 2 =  Giants win!

Late start on Saturday and head out for some sightseeing, really did this for most of the weekend.  Paris is really walkable, things are not all that far apart which makes it easy to kill a day or a weekend just wandering the streets even with a 2 year old dans la stroller.  While wandering we gave them a taste or our normal life here, which consists of going to the market, fromagerie and boulangerie for the French tradition of Pain / Fromage / Vin (Bread / Cheese / Wine) - of which we eat and drink in copious amounts.  Especially cheese, oh is the cheese good.  All of the Lamson's including Ethan agree.  Happy hour was not just a weekend thing, this was the norm for the whole trip. And Sunday night Game 3 = Giants win!  

Go Giants!!!

Monday back to work, Cleaver off to Zurich for a one night work trip while the Lamson's venture out on their own.  Coming back together that night for a quick dinner and Game 4 of the World Series.  Trying so very hard to not find out the score all day proved a futile task as both my boss and another guy on my team who are Americans took it upon themselves to ruin the surprise.  So while thanks to these two clowns I knew the outcome, it still didn't diminish the fun.  Game 4 = Giants Sweep! Another World Series victory, just wow!  This also forced me to make "bad decisions" with Aaron after the victory whereby we head out on a school night to the local Scottish pub near our house to celebrate.  Let's just say good thing my calendar was clear Tuesday morning.  While I certainly missed the excitement of being in the city, glad to have Aaron and Ethan with me to watch and will always remember where I was given the unique situation.

Finally make it to Wednesday evening and a 4 day weekend (remember the holiday and bonus day) and head off to Bordeaux that evening via train.  Clearly this was very exciting for a 2 year old boy - and the adults of course enjoyed the ride with Pain / Fromage / Vin. I mean, what else are you going to do for 3 hours? Arriving late in the little town of Blaye we stayed at this excellent B&B type place where we were introduced to our hosts Clarissa and Les.  We had a large 3 bedroom apartment to stay in which was perfect for all of us.

Waking up on Thursday we had arranged a winery tour with Les which took us to Chateau Rousseau where we walked the vineyards, saw the operation complete with tanks named after the 7 dwarfs and a first taste of Bordeaux wine.  The few days in Blaye were quite nice, small village right on the Garonne river which is HUGE and has a really neat 17th century Citadel / Fortress overlooking the water.  We had a relaxing couple of days enjoying good food and of course good wine.  The weather left a little to be desired but didn't ruin our good time.

Back to Paris on Saturday afternoon and we planned a night out on the town.  We had a babysitter arranged which sort of worked out - eventually anyway - and enjoyed an evening out sans Ethan.  Last day was Sunday for more wandering and a trip to Jardin du Luxembourg which has a huge playground which Ethan seemed to really love.  Needed to get the boy out and run him a bit, spend some energy as opposed to running laps in our living room.

The week really felt like a vacation of sorts eventhough we did have to fit the work schedule in there.  Had a wonderful time with the Lamson's and had our first (but not our last) trip to Bordeaux.  As we have now seen a few different areas of France, starting to really appreciate the food, culture, and countryside.  Looking forward to the next adventure!

And Go Giants!