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!

Making Croissants

Shortly after we found out we'd be moving to Paris, I got this idea in my head that I wanted to take a class to learn how to make croissants. I figure, I love a croissant, especially pain au chocolat, and how fun would it be to actually know how to make it! Well this weekend I finally got the time and chance to do that. People have told me that it's a very long process and a complicated one and that it's much easier to just go down to your local boulangerie and buy one there. But I didn't care. Even if I never make croissants on my own, I wanted to learn how I could if I wanted to.

So I recruited two of my girlfriends, Amy and Jacalyn, and Saturday morning we headed over to La Cuisine for our 3 hour lesson on making croissants.


Now we did learn that making croissants does indeed take a long time. There are multiple steps that require waiting for 30-60 minutes before moving on to the next.

Here we are making our dough

Then through the magic of having dough that was prepared earlier, we moved on to the step of adding the butter. It's all about getting a slab of butter and basically wrapping the dough in it and rolling it out. But to get the butter thin and ready, you have to pound it with the rolling pin.

Once you've got the butter combined with the dough, we are able to roll out the dough.

And create our croissants. We made three kinds. The regular croissant, pain au chocolate and croissant aux amandes (croissant filled with almond cream).

 

Here is my croissant aux amandes

And the pain au chocolat which are ready to rise and then bake

And yet more croissants

And then voilà!  Yummy croissants!

Now the question is if I'm actually going to make these on my own. I would like to try it just to see if I can do it. And imagine your very own kitchen smelling like a boulangerie! So perhaps one of these days, when I have a whole weekend free, I'll give it a shot. Until then, the boulangerie will continue to get my business....happily.

Oktoberfest Take 2

It’s that time of year again where the tents go up in Munich and it’s a crazy party for 2 weeks. After our lesson from attending Oktoberfest on opening day last year, we decided we’d take a day off work and go on a weekday. We headed to Munich a week ago on a Thursday after work and had our first beer in hand by 9:30pm. And wow did it taste good. I’ve been drinking mostly wine here in Paris and it made me forget how good beer can taste....especially when it’s German beer straight out of Germany. We had a delicious German meal that night and met up with our friends Stacey and Alex. They were with us for the craziness of last year so they were also ready for a more successful Oktoberfest. Alex surprised us saying that he did the impossible and at the very last second was able to get us a 4pm reservation on Friday in the Paulaner tent. I don’t know how he did it but it was great news!!! We now had a guaranteed spot in a tent.

This year we also decided to change it up and truly participate in all of the festivities.  That’s right, we decided that we needed a dirndl and lederhosen.  And that’s what we did on Friday morning....we went out and purchased ourselves a genuine Oktoberfest outfit.  Eventhough it was the last weekend of Oktoberfest, we were lucky enough to at least find something in our size.  We were now ready to head to the tents!!!!  We first went to the Augustiner tent and found a spot at a table quite easily.  We made friends with the people we sat next to and enjoyed a few liters of beer.  Before we knew it, it was time to head to Paulaner for our reservation.  We got our table for 10 (at that point there were only 4 of us), sat down and were immediately bombarded with people who wanted to be our new best friends.  Along with our Paulaner beer we enjoyed some delicious roasted chicken (almost as good as that fried chicken from Jazz Fest) and good ol’ German potato salad.  

Before we knew it people were on the benches dancing and we were having a great time singing along with the band.  There were a ton of drunk people (I know, shocking) and things were starting to get a bit crazy.  The tent was packed.  If people weren’t packed into tables then they were standing in any empty space.  It was all really fun but soon it got to be time to leave.  Afterall it had probably been almost 8 hours since we had arrived and that was plenty of time to be there.  

The next day we met up with my friend April who had run the Berlin Marathon the weekend before and was in Munich before heading back to San Francisco.  We headed to an outdoor market near Marienplatz which had a huge outdoor seating area in the middle of the market.  The weather was perfect and we found ourselves a spot at a table, ordered some beers, some sausages and enjoyed a wonderful afternoon hanging out.  Before we knew it, she was off to catch her plane and we met back up with Stacey and Alex and a few of their friends.  Had a nice dinner in Munich and said goodbye the next morning.  

So overall I’d say it was a successful Oktoberfest this year.  Lesson learned....attend Oktoberfest on a weekday.

Stockholm

It was another one of those weeks where I traveled to Zurich and Oslo for work and Nate was in Helsinki so we figured we’d take advantage of being in the Nordics and visit one of the cities up there for the weekend.  Since Nate is up there quite often, I asked him to pick the best one out of Helsinki, Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm.  He suggested Stockholm eventhough he said all of the cities would be great choices.  So after my travels to Zurich (which was strange and familiar all at the same time but felt so great being back) and Oslo, I was off to Stockholm Thursday evening.  I worked from our Stockholm office that Friday and met up with Nate Friday evening.  It was finally the weekend!

The weather was a bit chilly and rainy all weekend but we were off to make the best of it.  Friday night we explored a bit of the old town on Gamla stan, grabbed a drink and had dinner.  One thing about Stockholm, and the Nordics in general, is that speaking English is never a problem.  Everyone there knows English and they speak it very well.  So from that perspective, it was a bit of a language vacation for us as well.  

Right outside City Hall

Saturday we were up and off to City Hall for the tour.  Stockholm is the home of the Nobel prize awards ceremony. The ceremony takes place at Stockholm Concert Hall and the banquet takes place in City Hall.  While we were on the tour of City Hall we saw the giant hall, which they call the “Blue Room”, where they host the big banquet dinner.  We also saw the “Golden Hall” where the dancing takes place.  It was pretty cool to see and quite pretty both inside and out.  City Hall sits right on the water which makes for lovely views.

We were then headed back to Gamla stan to check out the Nobel Museum (pretty cool....it highlights all of the Nobel prize winners and talks about Mr. Alfred Nobel himself, the founder of the prize), Stockholm Cathedral and the Royal Palace.  We walked around, shopped and had dinner in a nice local neighborhood and before we knew it, were on a plane the next morning headed back to Paris.  

It was a quick but very pleasant weekend and was a good chance to get a feel for Stockholm, check it out and enjoy some Swedish meatballs.  I think it’s a beautiful city and it feels very “European” to me with the buildings and cobblestone streets.  Nate says I should join him back there again in February when I can get a true sense of winter in the Nordic region.  Uh, yeah....meet you there babe!