Paris - In which I cry at the sight of art, over and over again

After going to Iceland last year, we knew we had to go somewhere completely different this winter. Nick wanted somewhere that would still have a winter, but we also didn't want to go somewhere that was focused on winter landscape. In steps Paris, the city of lights, filled with museums and cafes to fill the cold, rainy days of winter. 

When I first saw the outside Notre Dame, I was far enough away that I felt it was less imposing than I had imagined. As a kid whose first introduction to Paris was the Hunchback of Notre Dame, I imagined the towers to be large and dominating, overwhelming in their moral authority. The closer you get, however, the larger it looms, and by the time you stand at the foot of the church it feels as if the statues up above really do possess the secrets of the universe.

The detail put into the outside of the building is stunning. There are carvings around every corner, even the ones you can't easily see. It's overwhelming in person, but in the way that it will bring you to your knees in wonder. I wondered out loud to Nick why we don't make buildings like this anymore, and he said, "Because we don't make buildings for God. Only God would see all that detail."

As if Notre Dame weren't enough, Sainte Chapelle is on the same island. While the outside of Notre Dame draws you to here, it is the inside of Sainte Chapelle that really sparkles. With nearly every inch covered in stained glass depicting various scenes of the Bible, and the rose window at the end showing John's vision of the apocalypse, color embraces you in a way you will encounter in few other places.

Of course, no trip to Paris is complete without a picture of the Eiffel Tower. The top floor was closed for maintenance, a trend we found in a lot of places since January is the off season, so we didn't go up. However, its presence in the night sky was more than enough.

Versailles, the palace of the Sun King Louis XIV, was one of our next major stops. Although the queen's wing was notably closed off for maintenance, we got to see the famous hall of mirrors and the king's public bedchamber, as well as a number of other equally luxurious and opulent rooms. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Versailles, however, is what you miss if you simply look at the gold and artwork. Learning about how Louis XIV manipulated the noblemen in France to sitting back and doing nothing while he ran the show is truly incredible. This varied from having nobles fight over who got to carry his candle when he went to bed at night to always having games going in the palace which would keep the nobles actively idle and would also drive them into debt with each other. When they needed to repay these debts, they would borrow money from Louis XIV, and then, in turn, be indebted to him. If you ever get a chance to go, I highly recommend the Rick Steve's audio tour for Versailles. It's filled with rich historical detail as well as his peculiar, punny dad sense of humor.

The palace is incredibly ornate and massive. It should be. It cost somewhere around half of a year's worth of the Gross Domestic Product of France at the time. This is the palace that most fully embraces Baroque architecture, with gold leaf and marble on nearly every surface and paintings of Greek and Roman Gods, especially Apollo, on nearly every ceiling. But this castle wasn't just made to be opulent. Every detail tells a story, from the room which Louis XIV had built for his daughter's wedding, with a depiction of Hercules marrying the daughter of Zeus, to the war room, where each section of the ceiling is depicted as a different country that is jealous of France's power.  There's a master plan at work in every corner, a glimmering, expensive reflection of the twists and manipulative turns of Louis XIV's mind.

The gardens are equally expansive and breathtaking, with fountains that would turn on only when Louis XIV himself passed by, lush grass, and canals. Underneath the gardens Louis kept about 1000 orange trees, potted, that he would have servants bring out and arrange around the garden when it was sunny.  Perhaps my favorite part of the gardens, however, is the first fountain that you come across while exiting the palace. The story of this fountain occurs when the mother of Apollo, the sun god, was scorned by local townspeople. In her dismay, she called out to her lover Zeus to avenge her, and he turned them all into frogs. A brief study of history shows why Louis XIV may have been charmed by this story. His father died when he was very young, leaving noblemen to walk all over Louis and his mother until Louis was old enough to be king. It's a time in life he never forgot, and you can see its impression here in the fountain. 

If you look closely enough you can see even the human forms are in the process of becoming frogs and turtles. Their fingers are lengthening, their faces change, and their backs begin to hung over.

If you wander further into the gardens, there is a second, almost miniature version of Versailles. It would feel rather like the summer cottage of a king who still needs to have both a public and a private bedchamber.

Finally we made it to Marie Antoinette's medieval village. The doomed queen was enamored with the idea of peasant life, and so had an entire village constructed which she would wander through and pretend she was a farmer or a peasant. It's weird to imagine her walking through these beautiful renderings of a hazy blissful life of poverty displayed with fine architecture even as the people of France were literally starving. She is most famous for saying, "Let them eat cake," when confronted with the situation outside the Versailles walls, to which I always wondered if she was simply callous or just incredibly clueless. Wandering around Marie Antoinette's pretty little peasant village, as charming as it was, left a sour taste in my mouth. It felt like a Disneyworld display to the joys of human suffering and glorification of a life whose beauty she was drawn to simply because she would never attempt to understand the rough edges of the world. As we all know, this approach didn't work out well for her. She was beheaded during the French Revolution.

On a happier note, rainy days in Paris, although not ideal for walking through the gardens of Versailles, are perfect for museums. The Orangerie was by far one of my favorites. It is small enough to be fully appreciated, and the presence of Monet's water lilies is the enveloping respite I so often need when exploring a large city. Monet, although going blind while painting many of these impressions, brings  his garden to you, in many different lights and times of day. I'm not ashamed to admit that after hearing about them and imagining them since I was 5, I was completely overcome by the panoramas encircling me, and I began to cry.

The Louvre, however, is an entirely different experience. We went twice while we were there, mostly because after leaving the first time, we discovered there were some paintings we had very much wanted to see that we had missed (only to return and find out that the rooms they were stored in are, you guessed it, closed for maintenance). However, going to the Louvre in January when the crowds around the Mona Lisa are a fraction of what they would be any other time of year and wandering around this extensive palace as the rain pounds outside is well worth it. The artwork is beautiful, but I found the Louvre to be the least enjoyable of the art museums we went to, simply because of its size. When you are so utterly surrounded by some of the most spectacular pieces of art in the world, it can be hard to take it all in and appreciate it. The Orangerie was far and away my favorite, while the Orsay was a close second. The Louvre, however, would take me weeks to unravel. While visiting the second time, even when we retraced our steps to where we had been before, we found massive paintings we had missed or entire rooms we had failed to notice. It is nothing less than a labyrinth of art. To get lost in it on a rainy afternoon is a pleasure, but to get lost in it for the remainder of the day turns into a dizzying affair.

Near the end of our trip we decided to visit Montmartre. These streets were, by far, the most crowded with tourists, although once again the crowds were significantly smaller than they would have been any other time of year. In the main square, you can get your portrait drawn by any number of Parisian artists, and the results are truly beautiful. When you walk through the streets, you are surrounded by cafes and bakeries and tourist shops. This was also the only place we came across street vendors yelling "selfie stick" and shysters trying to catch visitors' hands in a yarn game, leaving their back pockets open and vulnerable. It's a charming section of the city, especially for its history with famous artists and writers, but it's hard to feel as if the veneer hasn't worn off a bit, and what is left is a hollow peddling of the memory of what once was. We found the neighborhood where we stayed, by Rue Cler, to be more authentic, with a large number of cafes, bakeries, wine shops, fruit markets, and bustling locals ebbing and flowing with the life of the city.

Finally, Nick and I decided to take a trip to one of the lesser known attractions in Paris, the Musee Fragonard. This museum is inside a veterinary school, and is about a 45 minute train ride from where we were staying near the center of the city. This fascinating little museum features a number of bones and specimens, both animals and human, healthy and diseased. It had a surprisingly informative English audio tour, and the collection is fascinating if you are at all open to learning about anatomy, or simply seeing weird, somewhat horrifying cases of the body gone wrong in the most unimaginable ways.

However, the bones are not what makes this museum (somewhat) famous. The most exciting and nightmare inducing element of this collection are the ecorche, or flayed figures, set up by Honore Fragonard. He was the first professor of anatomy at the school, but he was fired after only 5 years. Why? He loved to make figures out of flayed people, but not just for educational purposes. He set up these figures to show stories. For example, he made one of the figures Sampson and stuck the jawbone of a donkey in his hand. He took flayed babies and put them in dancing positions. Personally, I think the final straw was the figure below. He started to make the horsemen of the apocalypse. Legend has it that this figure was made out of the corpse of a woman he was in love with, but if you look closely enough you can see the figure has a penis. However, this figure, the way it is displayed now, isn't half as horrific as Fragonard intended. As he designed it, the horseman of the apocalypse is meant to be encircled by preserved fetuses riding on flayed lambs. It's no wonder he was run out as a madman.

We took the last day in Paris to cleanse our palettes from the shock of Musee Fragonard and hightailed it over to Disneyland Paris, where the snack food is Parisian, the American-themed rides ring with a little extra country twang, and the fiddle music sounds orchestral. It's fun to see how the idea of America is packaged and sold to other countries in a format they will buy.

Overall, the city of lights is absolutely charming in January. While the weather is far from ideal and this is when a lot of places will undergo routine maintenance, I felt like I got to see so much more of the city, both sites and personality, because there were fewer people around. It's a place I don't think I would even attempt in the peak of summer, but when it's quiet and the lights of the Eiffel Tower are twinkling, the magic of Paris has a way of warming your frozen cheeks as well as your heart.

Quebec City - In which I pretend to speak French and walk through living history

Nick and I decided to take a long weekend this summer to head up to Quebec City. We didn't have much time to travel, but we also wanted to feel like we were far away. Simplest answer: go to Quebec City, where they speak French AND have put a lot of effort into modeling the city off of Europe. If you are dying for a European vacation, but need to stay in North America, I'm convinced this is as good as it gets. 

We didn't do a ton of sight seeing on our trip. One of the great appeals of the city was the food, greatly French inspired, from duck and rabbit to crepes, and of course Quebec's signature poutine. During the day we wandered aimlessly, finding places to stop for a glass of wine with a cheese platter or sitting on benches to people watch. It was one of the most relaxing, food-centered vacations I've ever taken. 

At the center of the tourist section Quebec City is Chateau Frontenac. It's a gorgeous, castle inspired hotel that looms large enough to be seen from just about anywhere you are in this section of the city. An expansive boardwalk runs along the back of the building, providing beautiful views of the Saint Lawrence River and the perfect viewing point for the fireworks that the city has every week during the summer.

This is where we found the most aggressively Canadian tourist activity: eating maple syrup rolled on ice on a stick by men in flannel with stuffed coyotes and wolves behind them. It had to be done at least one. The maple syrup is as you'd expect: sweet and sticky, the purest flavor of the great north.

Old Quebec, nestled just underneath Chateau Frontenac, is one of the primary draws of this city. Filled with gorgeous old stone buildings, European style cafe and wine bars, and adorable little shops, the cobblestone streets would fool you into believing you'd stepped back in time if it weren't for all the tourists with cameras around you.

We really lucked out in this trip. Without even meaning to, we scheduled our trip for the weekend of Fetes de la Nouvelle France, a festival that celebrates the colonial heritage of the city. People dress up in all sorts of costumes, some authentic, and wander through Old Quebec as if the ghosts of Quebec past came to walk the streets again. There are booths everywhere selling colonial style wares, offering information, and teaching about what the culture was like when the city was founded.

Quebec City still has the old wall standing around the original boundaries of the city. It's the only remaining fortification wall in North America north of Mexico, and on a sunny day it is the perfect place for a picnic.

A little bit outside of the city are the Montmorency Falls. You can enter at the top of the falls and walk down a scenic flight of stairs to see it from many different heights, but be warned. Unless you want to pay to be taken back to the top, you'll have to climb back up all 487 stairs. This seems to be a popular place for working out as there were many men literally running circles around us as they climbed up and down the stairs multiple times, but by the time I'd gotten back to the top, I felt the height acutely.

The last day we were in Quebec City, we went to the Isle d'Orleans, a quiet little farming island in the middle of the Saint Lawrence River. The island is filled with vineyards, berry farms, cheese shops, and wide open spaces. It's a welcome breath of fresh air after a weekend of cobblestone streets.

One of the vineyards we went to was the Isle de Bacchus, named for the Roman god of wine. The vineyard was one of the first on the island and stands in one of the oldest standing buildings on the island. The owner is friendly and loves to talk about the history of the island, especially if it means he gets to pick on neighboring city Montreal. Wine tastings are in the old, atmospheric basement of the home. Our favorite wines from the island were those that included black currant. It's one of the island's signature flavors. 

Besides the wine tastings, the island was simply breathtaking to explore. With rolling hills, lush fields, and the river framing the land on both sides, it was the perfect way to end our trip to Quebec City.

The Icelandic Wilderness - Much in Retrospect

I had always planned to do a second blog article for Iceland, but with the start of graduate school, a cranky old computer, and winter settling in it got lost in the jumble and then ultimately forgotten. Well, forgotten by all but my husband who has been pestering me to update my blag for the past few months at the threat of buying me a new computer. Now that's love.

On New Year's Day, almost everything closes down in Iceland. It makes sense as everyone is up so late the night before putting on the world's most spectacular fireworks display. Being the intrepid young people we are, we decided, wisely, to rent a car and go off into the wilderness to do some sightseeing. With nothing but barely there daylight, snow, and the open road before us, we set off headfirst into the Icelandic countryside.

If you are traveling along the main road in Iceland, you automatically pass a number of famous sites, including waterfalls, viewing points, and long, long trails that lead to crashed planes (more on that later). These sights are breathtaking in the winter, and you probably won't be competing with as many people to see them (although New Year's day was certainly busier than I would imagine the rest of the winter would be. The one thing to keep in mind: almost all restaurants are closed. We happened to find a Domino's that was open. An excited tourist thanked the young woman behind the counter profusely, saying, "We are so glad we found you! Everywhere else is closed!" To which the young woman, with a look of the purist form of teenage boredom and regret, simply replied, "Yah." Another 50's style drive in restaurant we found was open...kind of. We stepped up to the counter, to greet a friendly faced youth who was chuckling, only for him to tell us we had to go, he had ACCIDENTALLY opened the restaurant, and no one was supposed to be working at all. Long story short, if you decide to go out on New Year's Day, pack a lunch.

However, the waterfalls are gorgeous, especially in the winter. Approaching them can be treacherous as the mist from the falls freezes to the earth only to be coated with another thin layer of water. To say the walkways are slippery would be an understatement, but the process formed the most beautiful layers of ice on top of the plants.

My favorite stop, by far, was Seljavallalaug. We drove a mile off the main road, parked the car, and with bathing suits under our clothing and snow boots tied firmly, we plunged into a valley leading seemingly nowhere. What would probably most frequently be a small stream was fed by melting rainwater, making it too deep to cross in most areas if we wanted to keep our boots dry and warm. After finding a precarious position higher up the mountain on which we could leap across a couple of ice blocks, we hiked further into the valley, hoping we had indeed found the right place. On the way there, we were completely alone.

But Seljavallalaug isn't really a secret. At the end of the valley is a hidden, manmade pool, with warm water coming from the geological springs beneath. With the promise of hot water, we stripped down to our suits, our bare feet sliding on the icy walkway, and carefully lowered ourselves into what turned out to be really lukewarm water. Looking up the mountain, we could see small streams of melting snow flowing into the pool, cooling the warm water from the springs. However, swimming to the other end of the pool, where the geothermal water was freely flowing, made the experience much more pleasant. There we leaned against the edge of the pool, arms propped on the side and feet kicking underneath, taking in the surrounding beauty. Though the layer of ice covering every visible surface made getting out unappealing, the slim four hours of daylight in January edged us onward, and we reluctantly got back in the car to drive towards Black Sand Beach.

This is where the trip went slightly awry. On the way to Black Sand Beach in Vik, there is supposed to be a beautiful lookout where you can see these gorgeous pillars of black rock protruding from the ocean. Although we only had one hour of daylight left, we figured we were close enough to the beach to stop and see this lookout. We stopped in a parking lot leading to a wide open trail leading straight out to the cliffs overlooking the water. This parking lot, with the exception of the waterfalls, was the busiest place we had seen all day. With excitement, we started on the wide black pathway, straight and flat as the Icelandic summer day is long. However, as we continued to walk, we discovered the flatness of the landscape here was deceiving. About 3 miles later, the sun had practically set, and instead of finding ourselves at a lookout (which may have been even further down the way) we found ourselves at the wreck of a plane. This site IS famous (thus all the people) but it was not what we had planned on and we were frankly baffled to have found ourselves there. Chuckling, we took some pictures, and decided to turn back. By the time we got halfway back to the car, it was pitch black, and although we made it to black sand beach that night, I can only tell you that the sand beneath my feet was black and I could hear the waves off in the distance. We refer to this part of the trip as the Never-Ending Black Road. It was beautiful and eerie and obvious and deceptive and exciting and aggravating all at once. And given the chance, I will never go back. It was after that long walk that I turned to Nick, a look of hanger on my face as I scarfed down a gas station sandwich, and we decided that we would go to public spa and geothermal pools the next day.

Our next trip out into the wilderness was on horseback. Iceland is really proud of their horses (NOT ponies, although they are pony size). These gorgeous fuzzy animals are smaller than other horses, but they have an interesting fifth gait that other horses don't have. This is called the Tolt, and in it Icelandic horses can run up to 20mph with at least one foot always touching the ground. This makes for a very smooth, fast ride. If you breed these horses with other horses, their offspring won't have this gait, making these horses truly unique. You can find them everywhere around Iceland, but I highly recommend finding a farm to go for a ride yourself. As the horse and I crossed rivers and rode into the mountains, I could imagine what it would have been like for the vikings who came to Iceland originally, traveling into the wilderness, relying solely on themselves and their horses.

Directly after the ride, we hopped on a bus to go on a tour of the Golden Circle, one of Iceland's most famous tourist attractions. On this path, you see waterfalls, Pingvellir National Park (where you see the meeting of the North American and European continental shelves), and Geysir, for which all other geysers are named. 

I had never planned on visiting Iceland, but when I look back on the trip, it is THE trip to beat in my mind. When January came around this year again, Nick and I couldn't help but feel like we should be heading back. Maybe it's the magic of the elves that are supposed to live in the land, or the spirit of the Vikings and the current people of Iceland, but it's hard not to feel the pull to return time and time again. Even with a week, we barely scratched the surface of what Iceland has to offer, and the rest of keeps calling to be seen.