Getting to Work

I slept 11 and a half hours last night and woke up feeling great.

I decided to try the hotel breakfast (10 Euros), and I liked it.  I probably could eat cheaper at a boulangerie, but not by much and it's definitely more convenient.

My knee was doing fine today until I took my first step outside the hotel, then BAM! lots of pain.  Still not sure what's going on; the pain seems to come and go; one minute I'm fine and the next I'm limping.

The weather was definitely improved over yesterday with no rain, though still cold and breezy.  My goal today was the Bibliotheque national de France, a rather brutalist-style set of buildings put up by Mitterand. 

The reading rooms for the library are not in these tall, windowed buildings, but below.  I'm always nervous when I go to archives for the first time, but I was particularly so here in Paris since my spoken French is so weak.  The clerk, however, spoke English and was both friendly and helpful.

After getting my reader's card and checking my stuff, I headed down to the reading rooms.

As I said, brutalist architecture: lots and lots of tall, overwhelming, concrete walls.

They assigned me a seat in the reading room and I started going through their digitized newspaper collections, researching their coverage of the Schwartzbard murder trial in Paris 1927.  As it happens, all the newspapers I looked at today were anti-Schwartzbard.  I wasn't sure about L'Ḗcho de Paris, and then I saw this caricature of the Yiddish and Ukrainian translators:

I wasn't sure what I was going to do for lunch, but there's a cafe in the library that was quite affordable.

The only thing that gave me pause all day was when I tried to find the toilets.  I think these signs could have been designed a little clearer.

I left the library around 4:30 and had a cafe au lait nearby, thinking there was free wifi, only it was kaput.  It gets dark pretty early, around 5, so I headed to the Bastille to buy a daily newspaper and then take a walk before dinner.  Since most people don't eat before 7 pm, I spent an hour walking around the Marais, before settling on a place by the Pompidou Center.  Called "Dame Tartine," I ordered the daily special (lasagna) along with a glass of Chinon, and sat down to check my email (they had wifi).

It was actually pretty good (I had my doubts about coming to France to eat Italian food).  I decided that since I had been very good about not eating a lot at breakfast or lunch or having snacks and walking at least two hours today, I could afford a nice dessert.  I ordered the gataeu chaud aux pêches avec coulis framboise along with a grande cafe creme.

I think they microwived the gateau so it would be chaud, and the pêches appeared to have been canned and diced, but it was still pretty tasty.

Back at the hotel, they've turned the heat on in the room (via a radiator).  There's no thermostat, so I've opened a window so it won't be quite so hot in here.  I'm going to try to get into a daily sleep rhythm, so it's off to bed.

Autumn in Paris

Autumn in Paris.

It sounds much nicer than "fall in Paris," or "a cold, rainy, and windy day in Paris," but it's the same thing.

After a moderately successful conference in Florida, where I again had a scare that someone else was working on a project I had started (and again, it turned out only to be related, not, Thank God, the same), I flew on "screaming toddler airlines" to Paris.  "STA," as I like to abbreviate it, goes by many official names in order to conceal its true nature until it's too late to do anything about it.  Last night, a couple with two very young children sat in the row ahead of me, and they hadn't even sat down when the brats started crying.  I found out later, though, that the worst was an infant three rows ahead who had a pair of lungs that indicate a good career in auctioneering.

I took my sleeping pill, popped in my ear plugs, and closed my eyes.  Despite the intermittent crying I did manage to nod off and I think I may have actually slept for more than three of the four hours I had my eyes closed.

No problems at all navigating the airport or the RER or the Metro, and I reached my hotel with no difficulties.  The room wasn't ready, so I decided to start acclimating myself by going for a long walk through the neighborhood.  I found the post office, the laundromat, several banks and markets, and some cafes.

This is Place de la Nation; probably the closest thing to my hotel that might be considered a tourist attraction (it's about 6 blocks away).  I'm in the 12th arrondissement, which is pretty quiet and almost suburban.  As you can see, the sky is grey (and will probably remain so until next spring), and the leaves are turning and falling.

I walked as far as the Place de la Bastille to check out what was showing at the Opera.  Tonight's the last night for Rossini's Barber of Seville, but I'm pretty sure I would sleep through the performance if I went.

I noticed several times on my walk that this or that scene would remind me of an afternoon in Budapest or Prague, though I don't doubt those cities had copied the architectural styles of Paris in its heyday; but as I'm spending so much more time there than here, these are the associations I have.

My goal on this trip is to walk at least 2-3 hours a day.  This will somewhat replace all the bicycling I'm not doing while I'm here.  I walked two hours before lunch and then another hour after lunch.

For lunch, I went to a small cafe off Rue de la Roquette called "Cafe des Anges."  The food was inexpensive and tasty and it had a wide and eclectic clientele.

As I walked through the neighborhoods on my way back from the 11th to the 12th arrondissement, I noticed some quirky artistic expressions in this eclectic neighborhood.

First off was this highly unusual take on a scooter, with its own astroturf.

Then there was some fun graffiti:

 When I got back to the hotel a little before 2, they had almost finished making up my room.  After washing up I lay down on the bed and almost fell asleep (despite the kids at the nearby high school playing basket ball next door).  I really try to avoid going to sleep early when I arrive on an overnight flight as I want my body to adapt to the new time zone as soon as possible.

I decided to go out for another walk, this time through the Latin Quarter, but I soon discovered a problem with the hotel:  its elevator.  It isn't its small size; most European elevators are tiny. No, its biggest problem is its reluctance to come when you call it, go to the floor you want, or even stop at the floor when it does decide to stop (twice it stopped between floors).  I've decided to take the stairs for the rest of the trip (it's only on what in America would be called the fourth floor).

After about 45 minutes of walking I stopped for a cafe au lait and pain au chocolate.  It turned out that I paid less than I would have at Starbucks in the States for the same, but the quality was better.

With a little more energy, I continued my walk.  I ran across this lovely tribute to the ground breaking French naturalist, Georges Cuvier, by the Museum of Natural History where it worked.

By 4:30 it was getting windy and starting to drizzle.  My knee was also hurting, so I made my way back towards Notre Dame, where I could sit for a bit.  A long the way, I passed this cafe, all lit up in the evening rain:

After a short break in Notre Dame, I made my way to the Marais.  The wind was really picking up and turning my umbrella inside out.  I finally made it to Le Tartine, where I chose not to order a tartine, but, instead had French onion soup and a glass of Bourgeuil.

Even though it was only 6:30 pm, I had had enough for today.  I made my way back to the hotel and climbed the floors to my room.  All together, I think I walked 5 hours today.  I'll be asleep in less than half an hour.

The KMart of Cruises

When Chris first asked if I wanted to go on this cruise I thought it would be a nice break after a long and hard semester and would be interesting to compare it to the high-end cruises I've done with my father.  While Carnival is called the "Walmart of Cruises," I think a better comparison would be to Kmart or Sears (when Sears was still popular).  It's less a luxury cruise and more what lower middle class and middle middle class people imagine luxury to be.

We booked an interior stateroom (there just wall behind the curtains), but it was pleasant.  I think it was a little smaller than the staterooms we had on either the AMALotus or Celebrity Xpedition and the amenities weren't as nice, but it was comfortable.

We had our safety briefing in the Dynasty Lounge, led by someone who appeared to be Vanilla Ice.

 Afterwards, we met a very nice couple on deck: Jane (from Lodi) and Eli (from Santa Cruz).  As it happened we all signed up for the late seating and they were seated at the table behind us.  Their table was very full and ours was empty, so we invited them to join us.

Every evening, our steward Rama (from Bali in Indonesia), put little towel animals on our beds.  The glasses, however, are mine.

Our first port of call was Avalon, in Catalina, which we reached by tender.

We spent an hour and a half on the island, mostly using the Wifi to check our email and facebook pages.

Avalon beach with our ship, the Carnival Imagination, in the far distance.

 The Lido deck was mostly small kids in the pool, with their parents or college students drinking in the bar (this is colloquially known as "the booze cruise").

When I saw the people lined up for open seating (it stretched around the atrium) I was particularly glad we signed up for a specified seating.

The second night's dinner was the "formal night."

 

The second port of call was Ensenada.  I took the two winery tour in Valle de Guadelupe, while Chris stayed on board and had a massage.

 

 

We drove 45 minutes out of  Ensenada to Valle de Guadalupe, which is the main wine-growing region in Mexico, stopping first at L.A. Cette wineries.

We visited the fermenting rooms, and then the aging rooms, which had a mix of French and American oak barrels.

Afterwards was the moment everyone had come for:  the tastings.  We tried about six wines - one sparkling, two whites and three reds.  Since no one had lunch, they had bread, cheese, olives and olive oil out for us.  I had a lot of bread and cheese so I didn't get too snookered by the wine (you will note the absence of anything resembling a spit bucket).  In the end, I did buy a bottle, but of the olive oil, not the wine.

Afterwards we went to a small, organic winery across the street, where we had tastes of four more bottles of wine, as well as some  local pizza.  After everyone was good and toasted we got back on the bus.

 In the late afternoon, we set sail, heading out to sea.

The last day was the sea day.  In the afternoon, they at "tea time" at 3 pm.  As you can see, people didn't really dress up for it.

They had what you would basically expect, but it was not nearly as nice as it looks.  The worst part was the tea. The water was luke warm and since they were reusing a thermos that previously had contained coffee, the water had a bitter, burnt coffee after taste.  The cucumber sandwiches were alright, but the macarons were overbaked.  Only the crumpet was good.

The last evening we took the "chef's table" event.  We had tried to sign up for it the first day, but were told that it was booked even before the cruise (which we had tried to do but were told that wasn't possible).  The maitre d' came over and after I recognized his name as Hungarian I did my best to charm him into getting us a table.  I used the few words of Hungarian I knew, talked about favorite spas and restaurants in Budapest.  For the next three nights there was no luck, but finally on the last day we got the call.

The tour begins in the galley and is led by the chef.

We try several appetizers and then we have a demonstration of how they make their most popular dessert: the Carnival melting chocolate cake.

Then they took us to the line where the hot and cold foods are prepared.  These re the cold shrimp salads ready to go out.

Finally, we went out to the ship's library, which had been transformed into our private dining room.  Here's our menu.

There was a large  party of six, including one girl who had only graduated from CSULB's business school the year before.

The dishes they served  us were the best we had on the ship.  Many showed the influence of molecular gastronomy.  For example, this brined cornish game hen was accompanied by balsamic vinegar "caviar" and parmesan "caviar," which involved dropping the liquids into another solution until the formed the small caviar-sized "pearls."

This was their version of "soup and salad," with various greens in a "warm apple and turnip soup."  Except the soup was more luke than warm.

This salmon was still pretty moist (unlike the overcook piece I had been served at lunch) but the carrots and beet strips standing upright brought to a vegetarian recipe for something called "the enchanted broccoli forest" from the old vegetarian cookbook of the same name.

By dessert I was ready to burst, but I did very much enjoy this dark chocolate, truffle cake.

 Thursday morning we awoke back in Long Beach.

They tied the ship to the dock around 7 am.

 After that it was just time to disembark and go home.