A bientot!

This post will be the last on this blog, as our trip has come to its end. We can't fully express how wonderful, how altering, how fabulous the month in France was. I personally feel changed by the experience in so many ways, not the least of which is a kindled desire to do more international travel.

While we were all sad to leave France, Nathan and I have vowed to return (a bientot, not adieu) to France in the future, and we hope this trip has created a sense of the wide world in Finn, too, and that he will choose to make travel part of his life as he grows up as well.

All that said, it is nice to be back to the comforts of home, among them a dishwasher, a washer and dryer, our own comfy bed. When Finn woke up yesterday in his own bed, he sat up, smiled, and said, "Home! I love it here!" And, as the picture above demonstrates, Virginia was beside herself to be back in a country that believes in cottage cheese.

So, a bientot for now, France. We'll be seeing you again.

XOXO,

The Four Americans

Versailles

We're now home in New York, recovering from the hustle of our last few days in France and the 6 hour time change, but I want to post the photos of our last adventure--a trip to Versailles, the palace Louis XIV built, and which his grandson, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette lived in until they were ousted by their subjects during the start of the French Revolution in 1789. The history of the palace is fascinating, and I left wanting to read more about the period and the French royal family who once inhabited the beautiful landscape of Versailles.

The trip to Versailles from Paris was much easier than I expected--a short tram ride out of Paris, followed by a 10 minute train ride to the village of Versailles, now a mostly sleepy tourist haven. Once we left the train station in Versailles, we walked the few blocks toward the palace. Along the street (which runs from Versailles all the way to Paris, as it has since the time of the palace's construction) the brick buildings that once housed the horses and carriages of the royal court remain.

At the end of the street, tourists are greeted by the impressive golden gates of the palace, as well as this statue of Louis XIV atop his horse. Versailles seems in many ways one oversized and over-opulent tribute to Louis XIV, in fact, as there are many busts and statues and portraits of him throughout the grounds and palace. Clearly, le roi de soleil was a man with no shortage of ego!

Below, we're checking our stroller (strollers aren't allowed in the palace), and Finn is having fun playing peek-a-book with Nathan through the fence posts.

Here's the palace from inside its grounds. It's magnificent, both in its lavish details and grand size, and in the strange perfection of the landscaping in particular. Nathan kept noting the obsessive symmetry of the place, and we spent several minutes watching the grounds crew manicure the gardens (they set up lines, by the way, against which the hedges are trimmed to straight perfection).

Our students had been to Versailles the day before we arrived, and had come back complaining of the scant shade and the terrible heat. We, however, lucked out, and were blessed with a much cooler day. It felt like autumn, actually. The temperature was in the very low 70s, the sky was at turns gray and bright as the brisk breeze sent clouds chasing across the wide horizon. We even got a bit of rain, which was so lovely! Afterward, the sun came out and the light was a clarified, thin white that came beaming in the windows of the palace and glinted off the wet gables of the roofs outside. We couldn't have asked for a more perfect day for our visit.

We ate lunch on the lawn near the large reflecting pond. We noticed that on weekend evenings Versailles puts on fireworks displays over the pond, which would be truly something to see.

You can see our French picnic here, bought at one of the snack vendors on the palace grounds (there are several food vendors, restaurants and cafes on the grounds, and even little orange juice carts at which you can watch the cart operator squeeze your juice from fresh oranges). We stopped at a sandwich shack, where we bought jambon et fromage baguettes (ham and cheese sandwiches on baguette bread), beer (it's France, so you can drink in public without trespassing on any social etiquette or legal taboos), and Cokes.

Here is Marie Antoinette's hameau de la reine (queen's hamlet), the little "village she had built for herself just off the palace grounds as a retreat from the order and expectations of the formal court. The hamlet is bizarre, honestly, in that it has a certain theme-park falsity. It was intended to look like a real peasant village, and the buildings are all thatched roof, the gardens really produce vegetables and herbs, the orchard fruits, and there's even a working mill; during Marie Antoinette's time the village also housed a dairy farm, and the milk, cheese, and produce that were the products of the hamlet were served at Marie's table. But the place is too perfect to look real, and the order and orchestrated beauty gives the hamlet an unsettling fake air.

Here, below, is the unkempt inside of Marie Antoinette's living quarters at the hamlet. I found it interesting that while the rest of Versailles is meticulously restored and maintained, this place is falling into disrepair.

This pond on the hamlet grounds was seething with carp, which kept the kids entertained for several minutes. We also spotted a swan and her cygnets and a duck and her ducklings tutting around the waters.

Here, not far from the hamlet, is one of the many luxuries of le Petit Trianon, the hunting chateau the royal family kept just outside the main palace. This place is the temple of love, at the center of which is a statue of cupid, his bow and arrow ready to strike a new pair of lovers.

Again, Petit Trianon. This building is one of the drawing rooms on the chateau grounds.

Le Petit Trianon is some hunting cabin, eh?

There was an installation of contemporary fashion up inside le Petit Trianon's main building, and it was interesting to see it alongside the period furniture.

Here, Vivi and I walk between the chateau and the central palace of Versailles. The walk is not short, but we found it a lovely transition from the bustle of the palace to the quiet of the chateau. Though the two are not all that far apart (not as far as a year-round home and a summer home usually are), it was easy to see how the royal family could have felt a sense of separation from the palace out at the chateau.

Here, on the walk and in the wind. It was wonderful!

This is the fountain of Apollo, my favorite of the many (many!) fountains on the palace grounds. In this sculpture, Apollo and his chariot are rising as if from beneath the waters of this fountain. We heard a tour guide tell a group that at sunrise, the sun comes up just over Apollo's back here, so that it seems he is pulling the sun itself with him from beneath the deep.

The palace grounds are, as I mentioned, ordered and meticulously manicured. It was easy to imagine these long pathways crowded with ladies in fine dresses and gentleman standing about beneath the statues conversing about court matters.

Here, we're inside one of the many large corridors of the central palace at Versailles. The statues lining the walls are of the royalty and saints of France.

The palace roof, post rain shower.

There are several galleries set up inside the palace, their paintings depicting various themes -- the wars of mythology, the kings of France, etc.

Here is Finn's favorite spot on the tour: the hall of mirrors.

Versailles made for a magnificent day of sightseeing, and a marvelous last day in France!

The Paris Count

Time is limited on my poached Internet service here, so I'm going to bullet-point it tonight.

First (to get it out of the way) the losses so far:

* One brown size 5 girl's maryjane, lost to the Seine river when Virginia decided she no longer cared to wear shoes as we crossed the Pont Neuf. The shoe fell through a crack in the bridge steps and we watched it float away on the green waters of the Seine.

* One wooden snake, known fondly as "Tom", lost to a urine-filled Metro gutter when Finn stumbled while waiting for our subway train. Au revoir, good friend.

* Our love for the evening meal, lost to the cafeteria dining here at chez Kellerman, our hostel. We're in Paris, so it's hard to complain, but this place would score in the negatives on the Zagat scale. (Tonight's supper, for instance: unidentifiable meatballs in a slop of red sauce, boiled French cut green beans, potatoes from flakes... At least there was wine.)

* My desire to hear the once-lovely tones and fine alliterations of my native language spoken aloud. Too many tourists. Too many tourists speaking crummy American English with a twangy drawl. Too many floral-shirt clad, camera slinging, fanny-pack wearing Americans speaking loudly as they shoot cell phone photos of the Mona Lisa. (Enough said?)

Now, the wins (and there are oh so many):

* Sailing boats with Finn on the pond at the Luxembourg Gardens. Watching the wind whip the miniature sail and turning to see Finn's total delight. The clack of other children clapping their bamboo sailing sticks against the pond's cement lip while they wait for their boats. The other park-goers stopping casually to watch the boats meandering across the pond. The kids with their candy-colored ice cream cones and skinned knees. The orange trees and perfect rows of Marie de Medici's shade trees. Ah. Ah. Ah.

* The young guy playing his violin outside Notre Dame, the faded burgundy velvet lining of his violin case turned nearly inside out on the sidewalk, awaiting donations.

* Chasing Finn through the oscillating sprinklers at the Jardins des Plantes in the heat of mid-day, post-carousel ride (he picked the turtle and sat in its hollow shell of a seat waving and beaming with each turn of the carousel).

* Coffee and chocolate ice cream served in tin cups on the sidewalk of a brasserie in the Latin Quarter. A little scotty dog dodging about our feet beneath the table as we ate, and, from down the street, the deep sweet-fleshy smell of ripe peaches from a street market.

* Those green water fountains all over the city! Cold water! People stopping to fill their water bottles, urging the bottles' lips between the iron bodies of the ladies of the fountain!

* Eating baguette and drinking lemonade at a park beneath the Pont Neuf as river barges pushed lazily down the Seine and bumble bees hummed over the allium.

* The Tuileries Gardens at 8:30 a.m., before Paris was really awake. Coffee in the garden from a snack shop. Green metal chairs set up for conversation in the middle of the promenade concourse. Domes of dewy shade beneath the box hedges, and Finn dashing merrily off toward the fountains of the Louvre ahead.

* Watching our students see this now, at 19 and 20 and 21, when the world is just beginning to crack open for them and the shine on the world is still impossibly bright.

* Virginia, eating chocolate mousse, smacking her lips and saying quietly, with reverence and revelry, "Yum, yum, yum again!"

* Catching Nathan's eye on the subway at the first sighting of the Eiffel Tower. Knowing he knows what it means to me to be here with him.

* This plan, already in the works: Paris, 2025, in the autumn, when the leaves of the Luxembourg Gardens are orange and yellow, the streets are quiet, the Seine's jade-colored water is set against a marble-gray sky. Coffee at a cafe every morning. The Louvre again when the crowds have gone home. A date for wine on a barge on the Seine. Reading a novel by the boat pond at the Luxembourg, a sweater on against the November chill. Something to look forward to.

Paris, je t'aime.

My photos have uploaded in reverse order here, so forgive that confusion, but I'm finally able to post a few of the photos we've taken of our visit to Paris.

We arrived Saturday and will be here until Thursday afternoon, at which point we fly back to JFK, probably melancholic and sorry to leave this lovely country. But, let me begin where the photos begin, and that is yesterday afternoon.

We spent our 4th of July checking out first the Louvre, then the Luxembourg Gardens. The photo above is of Finn's rental sailboat, nicknamed "Fighter". Sailing this boat around the pond at the gardens was probably Finn's favorite moment of the trip to Paris so far, and, I have to admit, one of mine too. The boat cost 2 euros for a half hour of sailing, and it was worth every centime of that price. He dashed around the pond, dangerously waving his bamboo stick, ecstatic each time his boat returned to the lip of the pond to be shunted off toward the fountain in the middle again. He told all the little French (and American and Italian and Spanish) kids sailing similar boats that his was named "Fighter" ("Il s'appelle Fighter"), and that it was a pirate ship!

The Luxembourg Gardens were overall, I think, my favorite Paris site so far. I loved the Medici Fountain (below), the straight rows of shade trees, the boxed orange trees lining the pebbled courtyard where dozens of locals sat reading novels and eating their lunches in the sunshine. There were ice cream vendors (and families walking through the gardens with pastel colored cones), a carousel full of laughing children, tennis courts where middle-aged Frenchman seemed to be taking their midday work break with a game, and groups of two or three pill-box capped gendarmes strolling here and there. We sat in the midst of this, in the shade of a row of trees I kept imagining must be beautiful in the autumn, and ate our picnic lunch of caprese salad, baguette, watermelon, and chocolate mousse, then toured the gardens. It was quiet, peaceful, and felt perfectly Parisian--the first moment we've had in Paris so far that was free of hordes of tourists and clamoring trinket vendors, and I loved it.

Here we are in front of the Medici Fountain. (I only look irritated because the sun is in my eyes.)

Here's the Luxembourg Palace, once home to French royalty and now the meeting place of its senate.

Earlier in the day we began our morning with a trip to the Louvre. We got a fairly early start, but were still met with long lines to get into the museum and long lines before all of the major works of art inside. Still, it's an impressive place. Honestly, my favorite portion of the Louvre is its exterior--the Tuileries Gardens--but I loved the Italian paintings as well. The most famous of the Louvre's holdings--the Mona Lisa, for instance, and the Venus de Milo--were surrounded by large crowds, nearly everyone in the crowds holding up their cell phones to take photos. I find this trend incredibly irritating. I don't understand the urge to look at the artwork through the lens of your camera instead of standing before it and taking it in fully with your own two eyes. I think there's more to be said about this--about our odd 21st century cultural need to digitally record our lives in order to believe that our experiences have actually happened to us--but I'll save that for another time and place. (Having said this, I'll admit here that Nathan, too, took a few photos inside the museum, and that I'm posting a couple of them below. Do as I say and not as I do?)

The lesser known works were, in my opinion, much more interesting, and I was particularly enamored with the many depictions of the Virgin and Christ child--both in paintings and sculpture. There were a surprising number of images of Mary breastfeeding the baby Jesus, and I noticed again and again (with a bit of a laugh) the look of total boredom on the Holy Mother's face. Parenting--apparently even parenting the Christ child--is pretty much the same the world over.

(Doesn't Mary look like she's thinking, "Didn't I just feed this kid?")

(And here: "I wonder what I should make for dinner tonight?")

(And this one, who is oddly surrounded by the homeliest little cherubim I've ever seen, seems to be not just bored but also a little disdainful of the groping little suckler at her breast... This is all a bit heretical, I realize, but it pleased me to see these images of a less than beatific-looking Holy Mother. This is la bonne mere. This is a woman to whom I can relate.)

Here, a particularly ornate and stunning ceiling.

The exterior of the Louvre.

Virginia, looking through a museum window as a conservator below works on touching up a sculpture.

On Sunday, though I don't have any photos of it, our itinerary included the gorgeous Musee l'Orangerie, where Monet's waterlily paintings hang in large oval rooms, and then the Musee d'Orsay--a museum slightly smaller and much more to my liking than the very touristed Louvre. We then walked the Champs Elysee toward the Arc de Triomphe. We ran into a festival and parade along the Champs Elysee, so the route was extremely crowded, but it was fun to see a bit of local flavor. In a low moment, when we were all exhausted and over warm, we pulled off the main walkway into one of the ritzy malls that line the Champs, hoping to find a cup of coffee and a bathroom. There was a Starbucks, and it was more than strange to find myself standing in the middle of Paris ordering an iced coffee in English, surrounded by other people ordering in English. (It was good, however, to get an iced coffee--something relatively unheard of in France.

That brings me to Sunday, and our first Paris adventure: a trip to the Eiffel Tower. Here are the photos. I'll say only that it was as beautiful and breath-taking in life as it has always been for me in image.