France

Life

Paris Honeymoon Diary: Day 5

Sunday was the day we chose to go to the Palace of Versailles, the royal palace that was erected by Louis XIV in 1669.  Louis XIV aka the Sun King, moved the royal court and parliament from Paris to Versailles in order to completely control a government of France by absolute personal rule. The palace is famous for its extravagance and for its scenic gardens. When gazing upon the chateau, one can easily see why the French people revolted against the monarchy.

With our hotel being at the north eastern end of the city, and Versailles situated outside of the city to the south west, our day started with an hour train ride to the suburb of Versailles. Even though this was a Sunday, I had to stand the entire time due to the sheer amount of visitors going to the palace. Once we got off the train it was a five minute walk to the chateau. With our Paris Museum Pass in hand, we bypassed the hour long queue to buy tickets and were whisked right in within seconds. This pass not only paid for itself money wise, but also in the amount of time we saved by not having to stand in line! If you ever go to Paris and plan on seeing landmarks and museums, do yourself a favour and buy one. You won’t regret it.

But I digress. Once in the palace itself, we walked around the many rooms admiring the level of detail, the richness of the materials and the beauty of the architecture. Every ceiling was covered in gold ornaments, statues and was beautifully painted. All the chandeliers were made of crystal. The beds adorned with ostrich feathers and very fine linen. Paintings and busts of the royal family hung in every room. More often than not, the paintings revolved around Louis XIV. The bedroom walls covered in fabric. Old tapestries hanging in some rooms, covering entire walls. Each door knob and window handle handcrafted to perfection Even the chapel was covered in gold. This was 17th century extravagance at its finest.

Suffering from a bit of painting and statue overload, caused by all the previous museums that we saw so far on our honeymoon, we only stayed in the palace itself for about an hour and we headed for the famous gardens. The gardens and landscaping was the main reason why I wanted to see the Palace of Versailles, and I was not disappointed. The craftsmanship and horticultural work of the gardens is nothing short of stunning. Fountains adorned every corner, flower beds could be seen for miles. The trees heading down to the artificial lake formed a maze that took you to various gardens on the estate. Within one of these mazes contains a small open air restaurant where we had lunch. It was quite something to eat on the Versailles gardens itself.

With lunch out of the way we walked the mazes and and viewed the multitude of gardens. We rested along the banks of the artificial lake, where we watched people rent canoes and go out on the lake. I was tempted to go, but with all the electronic gear that I was carrying we decided against it.  The afternoon almost over, we walked back towards the castle while enjoying an extremely delicious ice cream cone. Just as we arrived to the yards to re-enter the castle, the fountain water show begun. Seeing dozens of water fountains go off at the same time was a stunning sight. We decided to walk the gardens a little longer to enjoy the water show. Upon re-entering the palace, I zoomed into the souvenir shop and picked up a book on the gardens, as well as a CD of the music that we heard all afternoon while visiting.

The train ride back to the hotel was uneventful. The trains were nearly empty so I luckily was able to sit for the ride, allowing my aching feet to rest. We got back to the hotel at 6, had a small nap and headed out to supper at the Canon de la Nation restaurant. I ordered duck confit, which was my first try at eating duck. The duck itself was delicious but I couldn’t eat the skin. I found the skin too thick, very greasy and having a texture that I did not enjoy. The duck meat itself was delicious. We made our way back to the hotel for 10pm, where once again we rested our aching feet and slept soundly from all the day’s walking. Little did we anticipate how much more our feet would hurt the next day…

> Photo Gallery Link: Versailles

Luc "Sandman" G.
Life

Paris Honeymoon Diary: Day 4

On the fourth day of our Paris honeymoon, we first visited the Picasso museum. This was the only museum that we visited on our trip where no cameras were allowed. So the only memories that I have of it is in my head. Regardless, it was quite something to see the various works of art from the famous artist of Cubism. There are over 3000 pieces at the museum, ranging from paintings, sculptures, vases and even some cardboard 3d art. There are also a few paintings from Degas, Cezanne and Matisse found within the walls of this former hotel.

Before heading to our next destination, we stopped at a small Italian restaurant for some lunch. This was real authentic Italian, where the chef/owner didn’t seem to speak a word of french or english, only Italian. I had a Penne with tomato sauce, mushrooms and eggplant. As with everything else in Paris that I had up to that point, it was absolutely delicious.

After lunch we made our way to Notre Dame cathedral. We first toured the inside of the church, looking at some crypts, amazing stained glass windows and very old religious artifacts. We stayed inside for about 30 minutes, after which we picked up a few rosaries from the gift shop. My mom had lost her rosary a few years ago and she asked if we could get her one from Notre Dame. We also picked one up four ourselves, seeing how we didn’t have one either. Now we just need to get them blessed.

We then lined up to walk the 387 steps up to the towers of this 900 year old church. Let me tell you, climbing almost 400 steps of a spiral staircase is exhausting! Once we got up to the towers though, the view of the cities and the many gargoyles that are perched on the towers was worth the long climb. We took many pictures from this great vantage point before making our way back down (which was a lot easier than going up).

Walking across the front of the church we then visited the archaeological Crypt under the Parvis de Notre-Dame de Paris. These are ruins of Parvis (Paris) that date back to the 1st to 3rd century. The ruins were discoverd in 1965 and the museum opened in the 1980s. Once in, we sat to catch our breath and watched a video on the ruins and Paris through the ages. We then walked around the crypt, looking at the ancient ruins of old houses, some very old wall art and vases. Its amazing to think how old these things are. This is something that we don’t have here in Ottawa.

Once we were done visiting the crypt, we made our way back to the hotel. We had booked a boat tour on the Seine along with a minibus tour of the city for that night. After grabbing a shower, we had an early supper at a local restaurant. We didn’t want to venture far as we were getting picked up at 7 from the hotel. Promptly at 7 our driver showed up at the hotel, picked us up along with another couple, and brought us to one of the many piers that are found on the Seine. Along the way he pointed out some monuments and buildings, all while giving us a brief history of those objects and Paris itself.

As we boarded the boat for our Seine tour, the skies opened up. This gave us a great view of a sunset on the river. The boat tour itself was very interesting. The tour guide pointed to various buildings and monuments along the way of the 1 hour tour. Seeing Paris from this unique viewpoint was breathtaking. We were able to see many famous buildings and monuments, like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame cathedral, the new Opera House, the Assemble Generale, the old fortress and a great number of other
landmarks. As we passed people walking next to the river or on bridges, they all waved and cheered as the boat sailed by. Whoever said Parisians aren’t friendly was very much mistaken. Once the boat ride over, we pulled up to the pier practically at the foot of the Eiffel tower. Seeing the tower gleam from the sunset behind it was an absolutely beautiful sight.

Our driver picked us up from the pier and first drove us to the Trocadero to catch the Eiffel Tower Illumination. This is a daily show at dusk where the Eiffel tower sparkles in a stunning light show. We managed to get there just in time as the show started. I videotaped the light show as Erin snapped some pictures. We admired this gorgeous display for about 10 minutes before once again emarking on our minibus (which was really just a minivan) for our tour of the city.

Our driver Olivier whisked us around town where we were able to see landmarks such as the Arc de Triomphe, the musee des Invalides, the President’s mansion, the old Opera House, Bastille, Concorde, the Hotel de Ville and many more. He gave us a history of each monument, along with continuing with the history of the city along with some interesting tidbits of information (like Ile St-Louis is an artificial island created to allow the expansion of the city). He also took us to the haute couture shopping district. Erin was practically drooling as we saw shops like Cartier, Chanel, Christian Dior, Christian Lacroix, Yves St-Laurent and Cavalli. The minibus tour over, we were dropped off at our hotel around 11pm, where we prepared for the next day’s outing to Versailles.

> Photo Gallery Link: Notre Dame cathedral

> Photo Gallery Link: Crypt of Notre Dame

> Photo Gallery Link: Seine boat ride

> Photo Gallery Link: Eiffel Tower Illuminations

Luc "Sandman" G.
Life

Paris Honeymoon Diary: Day 1

As indicated in an earlier post, we had decided to go to Paris for our honeymoon. We were both excited to go to the city of lights. Erin had gone a decade earlier and always wanted to go back. She also had told her mom long ago that she would go back there for her honeymoon, so I had to oblige. For me, I’ve always wanted to go to Paris to see the sights, with a strong yearning to go to the Louvre to see the ancient egyptian, roman and greek exhibits. We figured out a few months earlier that we could make it financially work, so off to Paris we went.

We were flying out of Montreal, and my parents had nicely agreed to drive us to the airport from Ottawa. The drive to Montreal was spent talking about the wedding and about what we were going to do in France. We arrived at the airport around 5:30pm, we grabbed some supper, I grabbed a last smoke and we waited in line to go through security. It was a very long lineup and it took us close to 45 minutes to finally go through the security checkpoint. We waited at the gate for a few hours, boarded at 9:20pm and our flight departed on time at 9:45.

I had never flown at night, so I gazed out the window often, looking at the small pockets of lights emanating from the small towns and cities that we flew over. Once we got to the ocean I could even make out a couple of ocean liners on the sea. I kept my nicotine fits at bay with some Nicorette gum and fell asleep while watching Mad Money on the plane’s screens. I slept for maybe 45 minutes when I was suddenly woken by the shrill screams of a woman at the back of the plane. She was screaming screams of panic at the top of her lungs. A few seconds later one of the stewardesses asked on the intercom if there was a doctor on board. Still half asleep and remembering the high number of old people on the plane, my first thoughts were that someone had passed away. After a minute or two the screams stopped. Both Erin and I looked back but we couldn’t see anything. To do this we’re not sure what happened. Maybe it was just someone having a panic attack. We’ll never know.

We landed in Paris at 9:45am (local time), 6 and a half hours after leaving Montreal. We couldn’t leave the plane immediately as paramedics had to be brought on board first. Finally off the plane, we passed through the security checkpoint and gathered our luggage. With our luggage in hand, a security guard came out and asked all of us in the terminal, a good 1000 people, to back up and go against the far wall. It seems that someone had left a suspicious package near the exit and that we couldn’t leave until the investigated. First a screaming woman on the plane, now the possibilities of a bomb at the airport. I thought to myself that this was a great start to our honeymoon. 30-40 minutes later we were finally allowed to leave. We had to walk to another terminal where we had to wait in another line to buy Metro tickets. 20 minutes later, tickets finally in hand, we made our way down to the Metro stop and took the train for the city.

We at on the train, tired from a long trip with little sleep, watching all the graffiti outside whiz by, while listening to a local woman argue with a metro security guard as to why she didnt have the right ticket for the train. Once we got to our desired station, we lugged our luggage up and down many flights of stairs in order to transfer to the metro line that would take us to another metro station, where again we lugged our luggage up and down many stairs to finally catch the metro that would take us to our hotel. We had looked on the internet to plan which metros we needed to take, so there was little guessing game involved. But the metro internet site was not correct on one thing: which stop to get off for our hotel. We got off the metro at the Voltaire station, thinking the hotel was just a block away. I looked up at a building and saw the address as being 133. Hour hotel was 233. We couldn’t be too far from it I thought. I was very wrong. Building numbers don’t increase as quickly as they do here in North America. I discovered that in Paris, one city block goes up by maybe 1 or 2 numbers address wise. We had to walk over 2 kilometers before reaching our hotel.

Drenched in sweat, we tried to check in only to be told we couldn’t check into our room before 2:30pm. It was 12:30. All we were looking forward to was a nice shower and a little nap, but that now had to wait. We talked with the concierge a little while. I pointed out the main tourist attractions in Paris on a metro map he had, and informed us that we were but 2 blocks away from a main metro station. Needless to say, I swore at myself for that one.

We stored our luggage in a storage area, I cleaned myself up in the hotel’s public washroom and we headed out to grab some lunch. By this time we were both starving. Next to the hotel was a small mom & pop burger joint so we decided to stop there. We both devoured one of the most delicious hamburgers either of us had ever tasted while watching the Simpsons in french on the flatscreen they had next to our table. Satisfied and a little rested, we decided to walk up and down the streets near the hotel to scope out the various stores, bakeries, grocers and chocolateers that were nearby. We also made our way to a park snapped a few pictures and headed back to the hotel as it was 2:15.

Upon our return we were able to check in. Once in the room, we unpacked a little before taking a nap. At this point we had been awake for almost 24 hours and we were tired. I placed a wakeup call to make sure we didn’t sleep too much. We napped for a little an hour, showered and unpacked a little more. Not wanting to waste the day, we looked at the metro map given to us by the concierge and decided to head to the closest sight that we wanted to see. That happened to be the Pere Lachaise cemetery. This is the cemetery where Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Marceau and other famous people are buried. We got to the cemetery at 5:15pm and we walked around looking for a few famous grave sites. We never did find them, as we were ushered out of the cemetery at 6pm as it was closing.

Trying to keep a good eating schedule, we headed to a cafe near the cemetery for some supper. We stopped at the Pere Lachaise Brasserie where we both had a panini (mine was a ground beef panini that was out of this world). We sat on the restaurant’s terrace, doing some people watching and talking about our first day in Paris and what we wanted to do the following day. After the brasserie, Erin bought herself some vanilla ice cream (or glace as they call it in France) at a ice cream parlor called Ice on Ice. I had a spoonful and quickly realized why for years Erin raved about how delicious ice cream in Paris was.

Our bellies stuffed, our eyes tired and 8pm showing on the clock we decided to head back to the hotel and get a good night’s sleep. On our way back we stopped by the local grocer and picked up some drinks for the hotel room. We laid in bed watching some French news shows and quickly fell asleep, resting for our busy day ahead.

> Photo Gallery Link: Pere Lachaise cemetary

Luc "Sandman" G.
Life

An Overview of our Paris Honeymoon.

We decided to go to Paris for our honeymoon. Erin had been once before when she was a teenager, but I had never been. I did however always want to visit the City of Lights since I was a young boy, and Erin has always wanted to go back, so going there for our honeymoon was a nobrainer (assuming we could afford it, which we could).

We spent 8 days in Paris. Well really 7 days, as the 8th day we flew out in the morning. It was wonderful and amazing. Sadly we only got to see but a handful of sites that we wanted to see due to the shear amount of tourist attractions and long lines due to the great number of tourists. This just means that we’ll have to go back! The sites that we did manage to see are: Pere Lachaise cemetery (though we never found Jim Morrison‘s grave), The Louvre (saw about half of it), the Orsay museum, the Picasso museum, the Rodin museum, Versailles (both the castle and the gardens), the catacombs, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, a boat ride on the Seine, the Pantheon, Notre Dame cathedral, the Notre Dame crypt and a few other things.

We stayed at the Grand Hotel Francais which was situated just north of the main island. The hotel is luckily just a couple of blocks away from a main metro station (Nation) , so it was easy for us to get to our destinations quickly. Our concierge Diede was extremely helpful and friendly. He definitely made our stay more enjoyable. The hotel room was fairly big for a European hotel room (about average size in comparison to North American hotel rooms), had a fully working air conditioner, an in room safe, a big stand up shower and a comfortable bed.

We visited many sites, and at the end of each day our feet were so sore that we could barely walk. Every tourist attraction required either a lot of walking, a lot of stair climbing or a combination of both. My feet have muscles where none existed before. We have to remember to bring some Dr. Scholls for the next time we go.

Its true what they say about food in France, It was absolutely delicious. We mostly ate in cafes and brasseries for lunch and dinner. For breakfast we picked up some fruit from the local grocer and some pastries from one of the many bakeries close to the hotel. There’s nothing like some freshly picked fruit and a freshly made croissant to get your day started. I did manage to try a few things that I’ve never had before, like a tartar and some duck. We also ate some Italian (much better than any Italian I’ve had in North America, and I even dared to have a Royal with cheese at McDonald’s 😛

The culture in Paris is very different from what we’re accustomed to in North America. The priority doesn’t seem to be on service but on the goods themselves. Its a much more laid back atmosphere than what we’re used to.

Here are some observations that we made:

  • Parisian drivers are insane!
  • Half the population gets around on scooters or motorbikes. I saw a total of 1 SUV my entire time there.
  • Coke is everywhere. Pepsi is nowhere to be seen. And you don’t order a Coke, you order a Coka.
  • Paris is fairly clean, its not that dirty.
  • Graffiti is rampant, but not on building facades.
  • The metro can take you anywhere quickly (that’s a hint, OC Transpo)
  • There’s a plague of spiral staircases everywhere.
  • People are very friendly.
  • There are public toilets (similar to Go Huts) on every street.
  • Paris is not very handicap friendly, or to those with strollers.
  • Beer is as cheap as pop in restaurants.
  • Chain stores are rare. Mostly mom & pop type stores, who open and close when they feel like it.
  • Pickpocketing is rampant. Luckily we didn’t get hit. I thankfully read up on their common tricks before we got there.
  • It is truly the City of Lights. Nighttime in Paris is gorgeous.

I managed to write a diary of our adventures. I’ll post them up as a small series sometime this week as time permits.

I totally fell in love with the city, its people, the food and its atmosphere. So much so that we plan on going back, hopefully for our 5 year anniversary. I now understand why Erin wanted to go back so much.

Luc "Sandman" G.
Life Music

Life, love and music

Its been a while since I’ve posted anything that wasn’t hockey related. Stanley Cup playoffs aside, my life has been pretty hectic dealing with last minute wedding preparations. There seems so much left to do that it seems overwhelming. Luckily a few months ago my fiancee had the great idea of hiring a wedding coordinator and she has been a godsend. She’s given us some good ideas for decorations, and relieved us of the stress of having to deal with all the various people/companies for last minute preparations and the day of the wedding. I will admit that at first I did not see the point of having a coordinator, but as the big day gets closer I can’t phantom how more hectic things would be for us right now. We have the peace of mind knowing that she’ll be decorating the church and the hall, as well as coordinating everything on the day of the wedding. She’s also double and triple checking with everyone and all companies we hired, making sure everyone gets there at the proper time so that there’s no ugly surprises for us to deal with. This will allow us to enjoy the day worry-free.

We still haven’t gotten around to planning out our honeymoon to Paris. There’s so many places to visit and things to see that making a schedule is the only way we’ll get to see it all. Museums like the Louvre don’t have all sections open every day, so we have to figure out which days are best for us to go without missing anything. There’s only a few weeks left to plan things out, so we should get to it ASAP. So why am I sitting here blogging? 🙂

This is also the start of birthday season. Nieces, nephews, cousins all were born in the summertime. So we’re doing a lot of running around doing some shopping, visiting family, etc… Between that and the wedding/honeymoon planning, there isn’t much time for anything else.

Erin and I did manage to take the time and catch a concert last night. We saw Melanie C at the Bronson Centre. She’s currently touring small venues in Canada. If you’ve never heard her solo stuff, its very different from the Spice Girls. The concert was small and intimate, which is what she was aiming for on this tour. There was maybe 400 people at the concert, but that low turnout didn’t come as much of a surprise. There was next to no publicity for the show and the Bronson Centre is not the best venue for a concert. It was held at what used to be Immaculata High School‘s auditorium, which doesn’t really conducive to a concert atmosphere. That being said, the show itself was very good. Backed by a 5 piece band, she belted out songs from her last album along with past hits (in Europe mostly, where her solo work is a lot more popular than North America). Having such an intimate rock show allowed for great interactivity with the energized crowd. The size of the show and the crowd made the whole thing seem a lot more personal. I did manage to tape 3 songs (which she mentioned she doesn’t mind people doing, as long as its not ‘shit’ 😛 ). I’ll post them up on youtube sometime in the next few days. That being said, I would definitely catch her again in concert if she ever comes back to Ottawa.

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Luc "Sandman" G.

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