The Absinthe Made Me Do It!

We took a day trip to Auvers-Sur-Oise (thanks for the recommendation, Susannah!), which is a small village north of Paris where Vincent van Gogh spent the last two months of his life after leaving the asylum in Provence. He produced at least one painting or sketch every day until he fatally wounded himself in his room at the Auberge Ravoux on July 29th. It was said he went crazy (crā- crā) from either drinking cheap absinthe or eating too much lead paint. Both he and his brother Theo are buried at the cemetery here.

Ooh La La, Requisite Paris Pics

I pretty much spent the whole week in Paris walking. It is such a beautiful city, and although there was a lot to see, many things were within reasonable walking distance. So I'd go from point A to point B, then point C, and what the hell, why not just walk to point D while I'm at it. This pretty much added up to walking for about 8 hours a day or more. I was (happily) exhausted by the end of each day.





























My excuse for not blogging while abroad was that while our apartment was ridiculously convenient--we were 2 blocks from the Louvre in the 1st arrondisment--there were no internet cafes in the area. At the end of the day, I just didn't have the energy to walk the 10 blocks to the nearest one. So there.


The Louvre (where I dropped my poor digital camera and cracked the screen. It probably didn't help that some French kid kicked it across the room):


































Musee d'Orsay, in the old train station the Gare d'Orsay. This is probably my favorite museum, housing works from 1848-1914. They had rearranged some of the galleries and a few pieces were missing, but it is an amazing collection. And the building itself is gorgeous.















































Centre Pompidou, considered an eye sore by some, with its transparent façade and color coded ducts , as a kind of wrapping for the structure: blue for air, green for fluids, yellow for electricity cables and red for movement and flow. It houses the Musee National d'Art Moderne, with a collection dating from 1905 onward.

How Do You Say "YUM" in French?

Having a meal of hot baguette fresh from the bakery, brie, some cold cuts and red wine at the apartment. C'est fantastique!



















Ice cream at Berthillon, on the Ile St Louis, and considered by some to be the best ice cream ever. They use only natural ingredients and do wonders with cream, sugar, eggs and milk. Winny had the rum raisin (very rummy, but in a good way) and I had the chocolate (super rich and chocolate-y) and wild strawberry (a bit too sweet, but a good complement to the chocolate).



















All-you-can-eat steak frites on the West bank (Thanks, Carina!)



















In Chinatown, which is actually more like Vietnamtown we had some pho (vietnamese beef noodle soup). At this particular restaurant (le Kok) they also bring out a giant plate of the beef chunks they use to make the rich broth. It looks overwhelming, but it was very tasty. The pho was also very delicious and super cheap.




















YUM.

Like a French Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle: Exploring the Sewers

In addition to the usual Parisian museums (Louvre, d'Orsay, Centre Pompidou) , I also went to the sewer museum, Musee des Egouts, based on a friend's recommendation. As expected, the museum was down in the actual sewers. It wasn't too stinky and strangely enough, there were actually areas that smelled pleasantly of fabric softener. I tried to follow one of the guided tours, but it was all in French so I opted to just read the English information plaques throughout the museum.

Some things I learned about the Paris sewers:

*There is a very extensive network of 2100km (over 1300 miles) of tunnels, with mains for drinking and non-drinking water, telecommunication cables, and pneumatic tubes.

* The city of lights has a population of about 1.2 million. 1.2 million cubic meters (317,006 gallons) of wastewater have to be collected daily and every year, 15,000 cubic meters (approx. 400 gallons) of solid waste removed and disposed of.

*It wasn't until about 1935 that industrial sewage treatment began. Before that sewage was drained into sewage fields where it was naturally cleaned and filtered before draining back into the Seine river. Ew.

*They use these huge balls to clean out the sewer channels: the balls are propelled by the water and push the debris and sediment along. There are also these big dredging boats that serve a similar function.

There was a tiny little gift shop at the end of the tour. Of course, two elementary school groups had just finished before me and were mobbing the poor gift shop guy as they tried to get their hands on pens and these cute little stuffed rat key chains. I fought my way through the hoards of small French children and got my hands on one of each too.

Paris, Land of Buttery Goodness (nomnomnomnom)

My apologies, I have been very remiss in my travel blogging of late. You'll soon see why I was too exhausted to do it while I was a-travelin'.

Although I recently went to swine flu mecca (Mexico), after a two week quarantine it was time to jet off to another continent. Destination: Paris.

I won't go into too much detail because Paris doesn't require much introduction. I have been a few times, but it has been ten years since my last visit. I have to say, the city was lovelier than I had remembered. Even though it was cloudy and rainy for most of my time there, it didn't matter because I was in Paris!

The time I didn't spent walking and walking (and still more walking), was basically spent eating. The French sure have a way with butter. I was determined to eat at least one chocolate croissant a day and I did not fail. Some days I even ate two...



















Other goodies:

Pastries galore!


















Macarons from Laduree. So delicate. So delicious.

















Pastry counter at McDonald's on the Champs Elysee. Yes, THAT McDonald's.















Ham & cheese crepe.

A Plague Upon Mexico, or, Hiding on the Beach from Swine Flu, Drug Violence and Earthquakes

I just got back from a very short jaunt down to Cancun, Mexico. Yes, despite all of the travel warnings about drug violence down there--because honestly, the chances that the Mexican drug lords are hanging out at the beach of the Omni Hotel & Resort in the Zona Hotela of Cancun were slim.

What we didn't expect was to see the swine flu hysteria unfold while down there. I had gotten a call the night before we left from a health department friend saying that there was an outbreak of swine flu in New York with kids who had just gotten back from Cancun. Great. We still left the next day.

The funny thing is, you wouldn't have known there was such a thing as swine flu unless you watched CNN and Fox News. No one was wearing a mask in Cancun, no one seemed concerned. Maybe there were people hiding out in their rooms in plastic bubbles, but I doubt it. At the airport coming home there were some people (Americans) with masks on--many of whom thought there were protective benefits to wearing them around their necks instead of over their nose and mouth. I was very tempted to walk up to them and cough.

On my return, I got clearance to come into work the next day since I was asymptomatic. Swine flu has about a 3-5 day incubation period so we could in theory be incubating H1N1 virus even though we felt fine. I haven't really attempted to quarantine myself (i.e. I still went out for happy hour the next day), although my coworkers tend to talk to me from about 5 feet away (or through the plexiglass window I have in my cubicle divider) and like to tensely ask how I'm feeling a lot. It's Day 4 and so far, so good.

Oh, and also while we were down there, Mexico City, the epicenter of swine flu, was also hit with an earthquake. During the five days we were there we saw the exchange rate for the peso increasingly slide to our advantage. Mexico just can't seem to catch a break these days. Talk about Montezuma's Revenge...