Good-bye to Paris

In a few days at the end of the month our year in Paris will be ended.  So it's time to say good-bye to what has become familiar and beloved about this city for me.

Breakfast at our place

Goodbye croissants, good-bye baguettes.

 Goodbye, restaurants**

Chuck and me at Pasco's

And mon Jardin.

American Winesaps ripening (planted 1872)

July has ducklings in the Grand Basin

Good-bye, museums,

Louvre as seen from the Musee d'Orsay

Main Hall at the Musee d'Orsay

Good-bye, marché,

Marché @ Rennes that I went to twice a week

And good-bye fountains on bright sunny days.

Pool at Tuileries

Good-bye chocolate shops, so many to choose from,

Un Dimanche à Paris--my favorite chocolate shop

good-bye to the Seine and the Paris bus lines:

The Seine by night

Bus Stop near my place

good-bye Tour Eiffel, which I see everyday:

Sunset view from our apartment

good-bye all my Paris friends, who have been so enjoué.

Good-bye Paris, I hope to see you soon!

Paris looking off to La Defense

**About restaurants.  Everyone has a list.  Here's ours!

Pasco's: 74 blvd de la Tour Malberg
My favorite: great chef, lovely interior, near Invalides.  Formul diner: 25 E entre + Plat or Plat +dessert, 30 E: entre, plat, dessert

Les Zazous: 46 Blvd du Montparnasse, 75015
Small, very good food and nice staff. Formul diner: 18 E for most limited choices, but wider choice menu is similar in cost to above.

Aux 2 Oliviers: 22 rue de Vaugirard (across from Luxembourg Gardens)
Small and not as lovely an interior as Pasco's, excellent chef,  more expensive than the above 2, but a tasty dinner.

La Caspienne: 4 Rue Stanislas, 75006.
Small, family run, French with a Greek flair.  I really enjoy this restaurant.  Good value for 20E for a meal.

Villa Medici: 11 Bis, rue St. Placide 75006
A nice, white table cloth, authentic Italian restaurant (the waiters and owner have Italian accents).  Sometimes one of the staff plays guitar music. Prices similar to Les Zazous.

Le trait D'Union: corner Rue de Rennes and rue de Vaugirard 75006
Our neighborhood brasserie, fun spot, on-street tables, but interior is lovely when it's cold outside.  Food is good bar food.  Meal for 20E.  You can just  go and have a drink here.

Noura (Lebanese): 121 Blvd du Montparnasse, 75015
Very good food and a bit expensive for Middle Eastern Cuisine.  Indoor seating very nice, but it's the outdoor dining in a garden at back of restaurant that is truly wonderful for spring, summer and fall.  They also have a restaurant in the Institut du Monde Arab.

Clasico-Argentino: 46 rue Madame 75006
Specializes in Empanadas.  Very tasty and they do takeout. Owner is a nice guy.  Not fancy but a big meal (3 empanadas and salad) can be had for 18E (without the beer!); if you aren't one to eat so much,
you can get 2 and salad for 14E.

Le Palais, rue Blais-Desgoffe 75006
A classic and great French cafe that only serves lunch (but the meals are dinner-sized).  Cost 14-20E,  depending on what you want. 5E for a good glass of wine.

La Reine Saba: 78 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 75011
Fabulous and tiny Ethiopian restaurant.  Meal is about 18E for more than you can eat and authentic food.

For crêpes, try any of the places on Rue D'Odessa (there are at least 10).  And of course there are crêperies all over Paris.

Seeing Friends in Stockholm

In mid-July we flew up to Stockholm to see the B family, who are old friends of ours.  Our plan was to visit them (not to go touring around Stockholm).  I have been to Stockholm twice before, both times in winter.  In the summer, it's a lovely, lush place.  While we had lots of time to just talk and hangout, we also got out and about near our friends' home.

Our friends live on the island of Lidingö, which is a large island, just across a bridge from the main part of Stockholm.  Here's a couple of shots I took on my morning walk around the island.

Bridge to Stockholm

Island living

Our friends suggested that we have dinner on Saturday night in a place with a view of the city.  This is Kaknäs Tower (a TV tower), and below it, is the main part of the old city, with the Nordiska museum on the left and city hall on the right.  Old Town is in the background.

Kaknäs Tower

View of Stockholm

Because the sun sets but there is nearly always twilight at night in July, here's the sunset at 10 pm!

Dancing Girls

We took a trip to the Millesgarden on Lidingö, which is the home and gardens of the sculptor Carl Milles who lived through the 20th century.  I like his work very much, as it is both modern and harkens back to ancient sculpture.

Poseidon

The whole gang of us (4 adults and 3 kids) decided to take the ferry out to the outer islands of the archipelago of Stockholm.  It was a beautiful day for it.  There are many islands, some inhabited all year round with harbors.  But others with summer houses only.  We also saw an old fort used to defend the city as the route we took by ferry is one that large ships can use.

Old Fort

Unique Summer house

Island Views

Waxholm Harbor

We all went kayaking--I have now kayaked on the Baltic Sea as that is where the archipelago is!  Since it was unusually warm for Sweden (80 or so), we parked our kayaks and went swimming.  I didn't take photos but K did!

We also went swimming after kayaking.  After the return ferry ride home, we all had pizza and a movie at home!  A very full day together.

Here's the whole B family and Chuck together.

Paris, City of Fountains

I love fountains.  Paris is a city that has literally hundreds of them.  In comparison, my home town has three and is planning a fourth.  So below are some of my favorites, many of which I see regularly.  I've tried to organize them by location, starting with four (of the many)
in the Jardin du Luxembourg.  The next three I see a lot because they are close to my neighborhood.

Fountain of Catherine De Medici and the Leda Fountain

Fountain in the Grand Basin

Delacroix Fountain

Fountain on Blvd Observatoire

At the corner of Rennes and St. Germain

St. Sulpice Fountain (this one is huge!)

One of the two fountains in front of City Hall

In front of La Comedie Francaise

All these fountains can be found if you wander about the city!

Fountain at Place Royal

Fountain at Les Halles

One of the fountains at the Louvre

One of the fountains in front of the Grand Palais

Green fountains (some are other colors) for fresh drinking water--there are 180 of these which were given by an Englishman Sir Wallace to Paris in the late 1800s.

At Place de la Concorde

On Rue Monge

At Trocadero across the from Eiffel Tower

La Cadière d'Azur

I have always wanted to visit Provence, but with our work schedule, Chuck and I decided we didn't have time to research where to go, where to stay and all the other details.  Then out of the blue a friend offered us her house in La Cadière on the Côte d'Azur, which is the far end of Provence on the Mediterranean Sea.  All we had to do was book seats on the TGV and rent a car in Marseille.  Not hard at all to do, so for five days starting July 10, off we went.

The train trip on the TGV was easy and delightful.  France is a country of farms.  Not long after you leave Paris you see cultivated land in every direction.  Oh, yes, there are collections of trees dotting the landscape, but largely it is farm country.  Here's a few views I caught from the train window.

Sunflower fields in southern France

Fields in southern France

Crossing the Rhône near Lyon

The train travelled through Lyon to Marseille, where we had lunch and then picked up a rental car.  Not the Peugot 308 (a fairly small car) we requested but were forced to upgrade to a behemoth Peugot 3008, which I dubbed La Bête (The Beast).  It made traveling on small winding country roads a challenge for our whole trip.  Chuck complained the whole time, not without reason as even turning corners with it was a challenge!

La Cadière d'Azur is actually a small town near the coast, but the house we stayed in was out in the country surrounded by other houses.   It was astonishingly lovely and I found myself just staring out the doors and windows of the house to look to the sea as well as just down the hill to the next house.  I also liked the variety of lavender plants growing all around the house.

Out to the sea (and the swimming pool) 

The neighbor's house

Two kinds of lavender in the garden

Of course we didn't just hang out at the house, although we ate our breakfast and some days lunch  before heading out.  Here's Chuck in the living room finishing a meal.

We first resolved to go to the beach, but the closest beach in Les Lesques was so crowded on a Sunday that we couldn't find a place to park.  We ended up in another nearby town La Ciotat, found a place to park La Bête and headed to the beach just to stick our feet in the water and walk around.  We did wander about and also had a bit of lunch.

We resolved to spend the next day at the beach.  However, the next day, it was very windy and rather chilly.  So we went to see the town of la Cadière and the surrounding area.  La Cadière is part of the wine region known as Bandol, which is unknown in the US as it's relatively small.  It makes wines that are tasty but mild with a flinty finish.  To our surprise, the rosé of the region is really good, not fruity and sweet but dry and light.  The photos below show the countryside with vineyards we saw (including royal Hawaiian palm tree that are everywhere).

Bandol vineyards

The town of La Cadière sits on a high bluff.  It's tiny, old and very picturesque.  After wandering along the main street (where I bought some lavender eau de toilette), we decided to come back at dinner time to one of the restaurants, called La Chaise Blue (and we had a wonderful meal).

Chuck on the main street

The other direction on the main street

Looking across the valley

The valley from La Cadière

As the photos show, the valley is a stunning place, filled with vineyards.  From La Cadière, we went across the valley and up to this peak, called La Castellet.   It is a medieval walled town, now very much a tourist haven with lots of little shops.

Le Castellet

The windy weather continued throughout the rest of our stay.  We discovered that it is called the Mistral and occurs in summers.  The winds got quite fierce, and we found that even at the house we stayed it, it was rather windy for swimming.  We made another attempt to go to the beach, but the water had turned cold (due to the Mistral) and the wind kicked up a lot of sand that was not really fun to face.

But inspite of the Mistral, we headed to Cassis, another small town a bit west of La Cadière.  Cassis stretches out across a hillside right above the water.

End of the harbor at Cassis

Around town

It's stunning but more importantly Cassis has a set of "calanques," akin to fjords, but of limestone.  I had heard they were worth a visit, so we parked La Bête, and headed to the harbor to get seats on a tour boat out to the calanques.

Marina in Cassis

View of Cassis from the water

Because it was so windy, there was a chance no boat would go out, but we had a delicious fish lunch and then got tickets for a boat with about 75 people on it.  As the photos show, it was a lovely day and a great trip.

Local beach

A calanque

Calanque up close

More calanques

Us on the boat

On our last evening, we decided to have dinner in Bandol, the town for which the region is named.  The harbor has a rather honky-tonk tourist feel, but it has a lovely marina and town center.  We also found a Moroccan restaurant that served authentic cuisine.

Marina

Town center across from city hall

All good things must end and on the last day, we returned our car to Marseille to get the train from the station.  Marseilles is not my favorite city, but here's a view of the city taken from the steps at the train station.

View of Marseille with Notre Dame de la Garde in view

A trip we enjoyed all the more for being so unexpected!