Recent trips, part 2: France

Where do you begin a blog entry about a week-long trip to a beautiful country during which each day was filled with notable sights and experiences? It seems to me a person needs to either write a whole bunch or else not even attempt to describe it. Well, I already filled quite a few pages in my handwritten travel journal and I prefer not to repeat myself, so this entry will probably fall somewhere between the two extremes.

Let me start with some negativity. About two hours into our voyage to France, right about the time we arrived at LAX, I realized I forgot the fourth and fifth most crucial things I needed. Here's a list of the top five:

1) Passport
2) Wallet
3) Camera
4) Camera battery
5) Camera battery charger

At the last minute of packing I had swapped camera bags and forgotten to move my battery and charger to the new one. Of course an SLR isn't powered by something as widely available as, say, AA batteries; I needed a specialized item that they don't sell in an airport. And since we arrived in Paris on a Sunday morning, there wouldn't be any stores open to sell me anything for at least 24 hours. Factoring in charging time, this ordeal amounted to about two days without my SLR and about $150 in replacement costs. Luckily, I had brought a back-up, point-and-shoot camera to cover those two days, but it's an older one and was really hard to revert to after using a more sophisticated piece of equipment for a few years. I'm still kicking myself over missed opportunities at the Louvre, the Seine, and Notre Dame... Grrrrr.

Okay, enough about that. I had to get it off my chest. The truth is we ended up with some great shots anyway and, more importantly, we had a wonderful time on our vacation.

We spent the first half of the week staying a few blocks away from the river in the Saint Germain district of Paris. It was great being within walking distance of some major attractions. Plus, we were also absolutely surrounded on all sides by wonderful cafes. We stopped in many of them for some petit dejeuner (a typical breakfast consisting of coffee, juice, and a ton of delicious bread in various forms) or an occasional espresso/tea in the afternoon. The waiters over there do not rush you out, so it was nice to sit as long as we wanted, do some people watching, and talk about baby stuff :-). Paris in general seems set up for and very conducive to long discussions, deep thinking, and even romantic moments (couples tend to sit side-by-side rather than across the table from each other over there). I like it.

One event I'd like to mention (mainly because we don't have any photo coverage from it) is the Jónsi concert we attended while in town. He is the lead singer of the band Sigur Rós but is currently doing a solo tour. We missed him when he came through California, but it worked out to catch him on our second night in Paris. He put on an amazing show that made use of a backdrop video not totally unlike the project I put together last year, at least in concept. Of course Jónsi's stuff reached a higher level of professionalism and included a more elaborate set with multiple display screens, but I really enjoyed seeing -- objectively this time -- what effect some high quality visuals can have on live music. It was a memorable concert, one that inspired me to consider working on another backdrop video one day, although not any time soon. Those puppies are a lot of work.

The second half of our trip was spent traveling around the Normandy countryside. This included stays in Honfleur, Saint Germain des Vaux, and Mont St. Michel. The first two are sleepy little towns along the coast where we got to relax away from the bustle of the city, soak up some of the local culture, and eat some more excellent food. There were some adventurous seafood outings where we didn't quite know what was being served to us (anybody up for some pentacles?). There was also some hot chocolate that could only be compared to the hand-made stuff we had at a chocolate plantation in Costa Rica. Yum. Oh, and one morning we had what I've been referring to as "the absolute best French toast I've ever had without any doubt." I had no idea French toast could be that gooey and flat-out delicious. It's fitting I'd have to go to France to find it.

If there was an absolute highlight from the trip, it had to be Mont St. Michel. This place just blew me away. I felt like we were staying in a castle from The Lord of the Rings. It's actually an abbey built on a rock island that juts out of what is otherwise very flat land. We could see it in the distance as we approached by car, and then it kept getting bigger and bigger. During the day the place is overrun by tourists, but we were lucky enough to spend the night within the walls of the commune. After the sun set we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We walked around the maze of elevated passages and tunnels, over drawbridges, through cemeteries... this was my kind of visit.

R did such a great job of planning this trip. We saw some city, some country; some old, some new; some rain, some sun. We dove in and experienced another culture and another language. I was able to detach from the rest of the world for a while (and it's not an easy task to get me to forget about work). We celebrated my lovely wife's 30th birthday and also got away one last time, just the two of us, before we hunker down and wait for our baby girl to join the party. I hope she enjoys the story one day of how her mom noticed some of her first kicks while riding on a boat down the Seine with the Eiffel Tower in view.

Be sure to check out the pics in our gallery. They are my only souvenir from the trip and were worth the trouble of tracking down a battery.