Paris, France

We left for Paris on the Eurostar from the new St Pancras station early Friday morning, to meet up with John’s parents who had headed to Paris on Wednesday. The Eurostar was such a treat to take; easy to get to, quick check in time, pretty scenery to watch out the window, and seats with head rests that prevented me from my habitual head bobbing whilst sleeping.

I know I keep raving and gushing about cities, and that is not going to stop with Paris. It was so beautiful! I loved the monuments and Parisian buildings, and I loved how they were completed by the cities layout. The open streets and the well planned monument locations allow for perfect sight lines of the places of interest around central Paris.

We dropped our bags off at our hotel in the trendy Bercy area of Paris (it reminded us of Kits in Vancouver), and then we took the Metro to the Arc de Triomphe. We climbed the stairs to the top and took in the view of the city; the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur, financial district, Champs Elysees, the Obelisque, the Louvre. A huge traffic circle (the intersection of 12 streets) surrounds the Arc and we spent several minutes studying the French traffic circle etiquette. I guess it didn’t really surprise us that the yielding rules were the opposite of England.

From there we walked to Trocadero, an area overlooking the Eiffel Tower. Enroute we grabbed two pain au chocolates, and once in Trocadero we had a coffee at a café with full view of the Tower. (Was paying EUR10 for average coffee worth the view?) We spent the afternoon hoofing it around Central Paris, hitting most of the sights on the west side. We capped it off with some crepes before heading to the hotel to meet up with Ken and Lindsay. (France is not good for our health – we eat way too many pastries and crepes.)

We had a lovely dinner with K&L and got caught up on all their Paris adventures. They were having a great time exploring. We also had some fun discussions about the US Presidential primaries.

On Saturday morning, John went to the Louvre with his parents. They wisely took tours once inside which showed them the highlights of the massive museum and gave some explanation of the art (helping with John’s non-existent art appreciation). The highlight for him was learning how to read Egyptian hieroglyphics.

I went to the Louvre several years ago, so on my sister’s recommendation I took a train to the Chateau of Versailles. The massive palace and the huge gardens really were impressive. There is a large silver collection in Louis the XIV’s state apartments of the palace, several pieces of which came from Rosenburg Castle in Copenhagen, which we’ve been to.

With precision timing, we all met back up in front of the Louvre in the early afternoon and walked east along the river to see Notre Dame Cathedral. The Parisian buildings along the way were equally interesting to look at. From there we split up; Lindsay went to a decorative arts museum and Ken went back to the Louvre. John and I wanted to check out the exhibit everyone was lined up for at the Grand Palace. We looked in the window and figured it was some sort of light show/exhibit. It turned out to be a large exhibit on trains, sponsored by the national rail company. The French seemed fascinated - we weren’t. A fashion show of French rail uniforms throughout the decades? No thanks. The most interesting part was that you could go into old trains, but there was an hour line up for each one, so we skipped that. Then John got yelled at by a security guard when he knocked over a barrier while trying to take a picture, and was told “This is not your home”. Great. We left. Now if the exhibit had been airplanes and airports, John would have been there all weekend.

Later on we walked through Place Vendome, a ritzy square where I can picture Posh Spice et al congreting at fashion week. Near the grand Opera House we found a quaint piano bar and had some drinks and French Onion Soup.

We finished the night off by going to see the Eiffel tower lit up. On the way, we had one of our funniest/embarrassing tourist moments to date. At the piano bar, John pulled out his pocket Metro guide and figured out the trains we needed to take and where to connect, to get from the Opera House to Trocadero. Once in the station, we double checked our route by consulting a large metro map on the platform wall. We were all staring at it, loudly trying to figure out where we were. We could see the green line we needed to be on, but the station names were all different. Just as we were about to give up thinking we were at the wrong station, a French woman took pity on us and managed to explain to us in French that we were looking at an advertisement, not the Metro map! We were so embarrassed but we sure got a good laugh about it. We were all chuckling, including the kind French lady, all the way to our connecting stop.

K&L of course got an early start on Sunday and they were out exploring a huge, intricate garden in Bercy. We rolled out of bed a few hours later and walked through the garden ourselves, and then along the river. It was nice and sunny so we went back into Central Paris to see some of the sights one more time before catching the train back to London.

Thanks for the fun weekend K&L and thanks to all John’s family for coming to visit us over Christmas. It was great having you here.

Scroll down for Portugal’s blog. Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/weatherills/sets/

Albufeira, Portugal

After a lovely Christmas in London with John’s parents (Ken and Lindsay), grandma (Pat), uncle (Trev) and our Aussie friends Andrew and Jess, John left with his family VERY early on Boxing Day to fly to Portugal. They flew into Faro on the southwest coast of the country and did a short drive into the Algarve to Albufeira and our villas. They were busy the first few days exploring the towns in the area and walking the local beaches. After working those few days, I gratefully joined everyone on the 29th.

It was beautifully sunny every day of our trip. The sun high in the sky beating down on us felt so good after a few dark months in London. It wasn’t beach weather but we usually stripped down to t-shirts by mid afternoon with highs of 16 or 17. It really cooled off at nights though.

John picked me up at Faro airport and took me straight to the old Moorish capital of Silves where we met his family for lunch. Silves had a Moorish fortress and a busy food market. As we have said before, we love traveling in the winter. One of the perks is that the locals venture out and you can see more of what life is like when a place when it isn’t overrun with tourists. Locals were getting their food from the market and wandering through the streets at Silves. They all had their winter coats on, while we foolish tourists were in t-shirts. We all enjoyed a huge lunch in Silves of local fish and Portuguese chicken.

We were staying in villas in a golf resort. Our apartment had balcony facing the south sun, overlooking a pool and palm and cork trees. We spent our mornings there drinking coffee and reading. We felt quite at home in our villas, making and eating dinners, and playing Cribbage and Pentago. We also got our first Bridge lesson.

The small part of Portugal that we saw was similar to neighbouring southern Spain; the inland was less rugged and picturesque but the coast made up for it. The beaches and cliffs were stunning. On my second day there John, Ken, Pat and I went to the southwesterly tip of the country. We ate lunch on the sunny patio of a restaurant overlooking a beautiful beach and cliffs (big highlight of the trip). We drove along the cliffs, past the surfer vans and the big fortress. We stopped at one the lighthouses and admired the sheer drop to the water below. The cliffs and surge of the ocean took my breath away, not to mention the fishermen perched precariously on the edges, tied to the rocks and casting down to the water.

On the last day of 2007 (Happy Birthday Sarah!), John and I drove inland to the cute town of Alte. We walked to a waterfall that John’s family had discovered earlier, explored the town and then enjoyed a coffee on a terrace overlooking Alte’s valley. We tried a local delicacy, which looked like a tasty Beaver Tail style pastry. It disappointingly turned out to be a sweet potato concoction. We should have gone for the Portuguese tart. Later in the afternoon we hit some balls at the driving range at our resort. Much to John’s chagrin, they wouldn’t let us on the course because we didn’t have golf shoes.

We started the New Year’s celebration with drinks and appies at Pat’s villa and then we walked to our restaurant for dinner. Chef Chico and his family did not disappoint; the meal was excellent and great value. We finished the low key evening back at the villa where we tried out the fire place. We were told it might work – it didn’t and we smoked ourselves out (but noted that no fire/smoke alarms went off. Safety first in Portugal). Trev and his girlfriend where the only young ones at heart; they headed into Albufeira along with thousands of others for what we heard was an excellent fire works show. We watched the top of it from where we were and watched some of the spectacular London ones on TV.

We were happy to have a fairly mellow evening as we left for London early on the 1st. It was a nice, slower paced, relaxing trip to end off the year, and it was wonderful to share it with the family. Thank you to John’s colleague Octavio for providing us with lots of tips on his home region. Scroll down for Christmas in London blog. Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/weatherills/sets/

Christmas in London

We had a busy December after getting back from Prague.

John has a new InterVISTAS colleague in the UK; Ian and his wife Sarah, who joined us in Prague and live in Bristol. So for the InterVISTAS-EU Christmas party, John and I went to Bristol and we all went out for dinner at a bangers and mash restaurant (very English). We stayed overnight with Ian and Sarah and they toured us around Bristol the next day. Parts of the city are really beautiful and grand. It is on a breathtaking gorge and the old buildings took me back 100 years. Where were the horse drawn carriages and men in top hats? We also went to the British Empire & Commonwealth Museum and learned all about the good and bad of Britain taking over the world.

We froze our butts off playing in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament on Sunday the 9th, and then counteracted any benefits of the physical activity a week later with a big Christmas lunch with the team.John’s parents arrived on Dec 14th and his grandma and uncle four days later. They roamed around London and England at record pace. We have managed to cross a few London things off our list with them – the Natural History Museum, a historical walking tour of the square mile of the London City and the Museum of London.

A highlight for me was on Dec 23rd when Jess, Lindsay (John’s mom) and I went to St Paul’s Cathedral for a carol service. It was an incredible experience. The Cathedral is so impressive but not excessive. We lucked out and got seats up in a gallery so we could over look the proceedings. The boys choir paraded through in their traditional robes and sang with heavenly voices. It certainly wasn’t like carol services I had been to in the past; it was much more traditional. The carols were ancient, the program quoted composition dates hundreds of years old. The only carol we knew Hark the Herald Angels Sing. I knew the words to O Little Town of Bethlehem but the music was from the 1500s.

On Christmas Eve day, John’s parents and grandma kindly got to work for me in the kitchen – coffee cake, nuts and bolts, xmas dinner prep, xmas eve dinner. Thank you! What a treat!On Christmas morning we opened our stockings, beautifully made by John’s grandma, and ate a hearty breakfast. John’s family did a lot of shopping at the London markets and they found some really lovely gifts – I was impressed by what they found. Our friends Andrew and Jess brought the turkey over midday and we all went for a walk through the local parks. We spent the afternoon reading, playing games and visiting and then sat down for some more eating.

Thank you to all our guests for making it a special day. I was exhausted by the end of the day, and I had lots of food help. I have much more appreciation for all of our family members who have put on Christmas in the past.
John and his family were off early on Boxing Day to catch their flight to Portugal. I worked a few extra days and joining them on Saturday.

Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/weatherills/sets/