Kristy Isn't Home

Last Days in Paris

This is the last post summing up what we did on our trip to Paris.

Day 6:

After picking up breakfast at a local bakery (chocolate hazelnut beinget and a violet eclair), we went to the Louvre again because David was determined to finish looking at the highlights. This was interesting, and better than the first time we went, but I still found it totally exhausting.

David is reading more about the Hammarabi Stone.

From the Lourve, we walked to to St. Chappell Cathedral, stopping along the way to look at various street art offerings. (We try to buy some sort of street art on every big trip we take.) The line for St. Chappell was quite slow, and our Paris Museum Passes did not let us skip the line this time (it does in most places). 

The Cathedral was beautiful, but quite small. It was also under construction, and 1/3 of the stained glass windows were blocked off. It was literally this room pictured above (which hosted a gift shop) and the small room with stained glass windows. 

Not to say the stained glass wasn't spectacular, but it wasn't a lot given the wait. I was glad that the entry fee was free with our pass. (To be fair, the security here was tight and that's why the line took so long. The Cathedral is entired surrounded by a large Justice building, so I think that they have more security concerns here than at other monuments.)

After this, we went back and bought the street art we had been considering. Then David had a big lunch, and I had a small one (snails). David planned to eat a lot because we were going to a fancy French dinner that night, and he knew there wouldn't be that much there for him.

After this, we went to the Arc de Triomphe to actually climb the Arc at night. The sun was just set.

 

 

We made it back from the Arc just in time for dinner. David was not wrong about not having many vegetarian options! The only things he could really order were a cheese plate and dessert, and the chef made him an off-menu salad to have as well. I ate quite well, with bone marrow and toast as an appetizer, duck as a main course, and creme brulee for dessert. David got the floating island dessert again. 

Day 7:

Our last full day in Paris! We had made a list of things we wanted to do, and we started out close to home at the Pantheon. It was a grand place, and there are a lot of famous people buried in the crypt. We saw Voltaire, Dumas, and Marie Curie's tombs, along with others.

It was raining when we went into the Pantheon, but the sun had come out in glorious fashion by the time we left. 

We wandered towards a cheese shop that our guide book had recommended, picking up pastries (macaron for me) along the way and eating them in a little park we happened upon.

The streets here were good for shopping, and I picked up most of the souvenirs that I wanted to get on this trip. 

The cheese shop, XXX, was great. We picked out four cheese, and I kind of braced myself for the price when she rang it up. It was only 13 euros! So we decided that maybe we could bring home a couple more cheeses.  After we bought our selections, she vacuum packed them all together. We stuck this package in the fridge when we got back to our apartment, and it traveled well in my luggage back home.

On our walk, we happened upon a street full of cafes. We decided to stop and look at the listed menus and possibly find a place for dinner.  We found three that had good options for David, and we planned to return later that night.

We then went to Napoleon's tomb. It is a big tomb. Note the people in this picture for scale.

This was someone else's tomb in the same building. (I think he was a relative of Napoleon's.) I just liked the window, and thought the whole room was very pretty.

After this, I was falling down from lack of sustenance, so we stopped at a (sadly, Italian) cafe, which made us too late to get to the Archealogical Crypt at Notre Dame before the cut-off time. (Note: not closing, cut off time. There is at least a half-hour difference here.) We walked back to our flat to pack up for our return trip. But at least we got some pictures of Notre Dame along the way, with the dramatic sky in the background.

We also crossed over a lock bridge, one of the oldest ones we saw, we think. Lovers write their names on the lock, lock it to the bridge, and throw the keys in the Seine. This bridge looked particularly old for locking since we couldn't really see any of the structure of the bridge for the locks.

We had dinner at one of the places we scoped out before. I had onion soup (they leave off the word "French" here), frog's legs, and chocolate mousse, in addition to pastise and wine.

Then we went to another place to have hot goat cheese on toast and another drink because it's our last night. We still had plenty of time to catch the last boat for a Seine boat tour.

Except that we had to pay in cash, and we no longer had any. So there was some running to a (kind-of far away) ATM and back, and we made the boat with like 4 minutes to spare. Whew.

This gave me the chance to take dozens of blurry pictures of the Eiffel Tower, and a few good ones. I also had the hiccups for about half the tour (see drinks and running, above), but they finally stopped.

We felt like we had thouroughly used our last day in Paris, so we went home to bed knowing we had to get up early the next day.

Paris Day 8:

 

We got up early, checked out of our Air BnB, and headed to the airport. It was an easy trip, and the airport wove us around for a while, but the signs were all clearly labeled with where to go. Back in the US, we had to go through the customs declarations line because of the cheese, but they didn't question us at all or even want to see it. Easy. 

 

Usually when I get back from a foreign trip, I'm relieved to be back home. This time, meh, not so much. I could have easily stayed longer and been just fine. Although it was nice to get home and see the cats again.

 

Paris Days 3, 4, and 5

Let's continue with our Paris trip, shall we?

Paris Day 3:

We picked up breakfast at a bakery (chocolate croissant and coffee eclair) and headed to Notre Dame Cathedral to begin. We walked around the Cathedral (short security line), but we weren't able to go up in the tower because of the smog. 

From there we walked to the Louvre, and after checking our coats (free, tip not permitted) we headed towards the Mona Lisa.  This is extremely croweded, but if you have patience you can move relatively quickly towards the front of the group. Most people who were visiting just wanted to take a picture and leave, which seemed a little like a waste to me. Not that I didn't take pictures.

This is what it's *really* like to see the Mona Lisa.

Just me and Mona, hanging out with some of our (pushy) friends.

From there, David wanted to see all of the works of art highlighted on the Louvre's map. This was interesting, but since the Louvre is a little hard to navigate and we got lost, I was quickly overwhelmed and exhausted. This place is freaking huge. Eventually we left without seeing all of the highlights. We found a cafe for a cheese plate (amazing, again), a croquette, and some wine. After that, I decided to take on a personal mission for finding macarons and a silk scarf.  I found both after about 30 minutes. I'm not sure why it took so long to find a macaron that day. They were much easier to find later in the week.

We walked to the Musee Pompidou.

We took a break at 8pm because the top floor of the Pompidou has a great view of the Eiffel Tower.  On the hour during the evening hours, the Eiffel Tower goes glittery for 5 minutes, and this was a great place to see it.

We were pretty tired and not that hungry, so on our way back home we found a South American restuarant for drinks and dessert (pisco sour and flan), and then headed home to bed.

Day 4:

We were finally able to get up at a normal time this day, so we went to a cafe for breakfast (cheese omelette, chocolate criossant). From there we got a metro day pass (metro was no longer free) and headed to the Musee D'Orsay. I really enjoyed this museum, although the second floor was closed due to a strike. 

We walked to the Musee Rodin, and found an old church along the way to go in and look around. Musee Rodin is under construction, so there exhibits were a little limited, but still interesting. 

For dinner that night we found a place that had both a vegetrain and non-vegetarian French menu, and we were happy to each get our own kinds of meals. David had setian borgionion, and I had duck. For dessert I had creme brulee, and he had what translates to "floating island", which was a big thing of meringue floating in some English cream.  Delicious.

From there we took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe with intentions to go to the top and see the views of the city at night.  We got there well ahead of closing time at 10:30, but didn't know they closed the entrance at 9:45. We would have to come back on a different day.

Paris Day 5:

Today was Versailles Day. We got pastries at a local bakery (chocolate cream bread and cheese roll) and then headed to a RER train to take us to Versailles. 

Self-portrait in the Hall of Mirrors. As one does.

After touring the palace, we walked through the gardens to a central area. We had a small lunch (cheese sandwich) and then rented some bikes to ride around the artificial lake there.  This was a great way to cover a lot of ground, although you couldn't actually ride the bikes in the Versailles palace gardens themselves. 

It's good to know that the map-makers at Versailles take macarons as seriously as I do.

We took a train home, and had vegetarian ragout at local vegetarian restaurant, Le Puits de Legumes.

Paris!

David and I just got back from a wonderful trip to Paris! I have several posts in my head to write here, but I thought I'd start with what we did.  At the end of each day I wrote a little diary with pictures so I would remember what happened.  Here's day one and two.

Paris Day 1:

We arrived at the airport on a red-eye flight. Going through Immigration was super easy. No forms to fill out, and only a "Bonjour" from the agent. We also got on the train going towards Paris pretty quickly, as all the trains were free that day due to smog issues. 

After checking into our Air BnB apartment, I took a nap and David went for a run. Eventually I was ready for seeing Paris, and we were off. 

We took the metro (free) to pick up our Paris Museum Passes. (A MUST if you are visiting Paris and like museums even a little.) From there we walked to the courtyard of the Louvre, and I saw my first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. It's one of those things you can't help but take a picture of whenever you see it, and my future pictures will show evidence of this.

We decided to walk from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe. Pretty soon along our path we saw a sign advertising "vin chaud" (hot wine) and it seemed hard to pass that by.  So we got some and took a moment sitting by a pond, watching people go by. Which seemed like the very thing to do at the start of a vacation.

 

It's a long walk, but we walked all the way to the Arc. The walk morphed from being in a park-like place to being in a huge shopping area.

It was just starting to get dark by the time we got to the Arc. We didn't know it then, but every day at 6:30, there is a small ceremony to tend to the eternal flame at the base of the Arc. We saw the procession leading up to it, and all the traffic that was stopped as they went by.

After that, we hopped on the metro and met our friends at an Ethiopian restaurant (Godjo) for dinner. (I know! Our first dinner in Paris was Ethiopian! But it was good.) Our friends suggested afterwards that we go to a jazz club in a medieval cave, but it didn't open until 9:30, so we had some time to kill. 

We were near Notre Dame Cathedral, so we walked over there.  There was a group of street performers there dancing with different things set on fire, which finished up with a fireworks dance.  It was pretty spectacular.

After that, we headed over to Caveau de la Huchette. Cover was 15 euros, and the atmosphere was very cool. We ended up a room away from the band, but it was a nice space. It was quiet enough there that we could talk to our small group, but certainly loud enough to appreciate the music.

After leaving there, we were a little hungry, so we found a Maoz on Rue de la Huchette. David loves Maoz because it's a great place to get vegetarian food, and it was just right to get some frites and mayonnaise that night. 

Paris Day 2:

We started this day a little late given our activities the night before.  We picked up some pastries at a local bakery (chocolate almond croissant) and ate them whilst meeting our friends in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. 

We took the metro (free again on Sunday due to smog) to the Eiffel Tower. The line to walk up was much shorter than the elevator line, although we did have to wait a little. You can't walk up the whole tower, unfortunately, but you can walk up to the second "floor". The walk up to the first floor was a little over 300 steps. On this level there is a section of glass floor you can walk on and see the people below. The stairs up to the second level are not as crowded since some people opt to take the elevator up from this point.  Although there were people coming down the stairs while we were going up, so it was harder to pass people going up the second set of 300-something steps.

The second level requires you to take an elevator to the top, and there is also a gift shop and restrooms on this floor. The elevator line moved pretty quickly. And then we were at the top! The views were huge, and it was quite crowded. We did get some champagne at the tiny champagne bar to celebrate.

For the way down, we took the elevator down to the second floor. David and our friends took the stairs the rest of the way, and I decided to wait in line for the elevator. The lower elevators accomodated a lot of people, so the line moved quickly and I got there before they did.

After that, we walked from the tower back towards the Left Bank area. We decided to make this a day of eating and drinking, so we stopped in to one cafe after another.  At the first cafe, I got this macaron, which was my favorite of the trip. 

From there we flitted from one place to another. We had a beer while watching the sun shine on the Louvre. We got a cheese plate (amazing) and wine at another place.

And finally we went to dinner at a vegetarian restaurant.  We hadn't been to enough places, yet, though, because after that we found a place for after dinner drinks (I had hot whiskey) before finally retiring for the day.

 

Myrtle Beach and Beaufort, NC

From Charleston, we continued on to Myrle Beach.  Before we got there, I was pretty impressed that we could get an ocean front room for a good price.  And our room was the best part of this day, in my opinion.

We stayed at Best Western, but there was a line of hotel after hotel for miles along the beach.  I imagine most of the prices were about the same. We headed down to the beach as soon as we checked in.

We had a hard time figuring out where to eat.  There was a lot of places that had buffets, but when we went inside and looked at them, the food didn't look all that appetizing, and David (a vegetarian) would have been left with little to eat.  Eventually, we found Big Mike's Soul Food, which was crowded with locals.  I got a seafood sampler, and David got a 4-veggie plate, where mac & cheese is considered a vegetable! The food was great (and cheap) and the peach cobbler for desert was divine.

The full moon rose over the ocean that night, which was pretty cool.

And then David made sure we woke up to watch the sun rise as well.

After playing in the ocean again in the morning, we started our drive northward again. We ended up in the charming town of Beaufort, NC.

We stayed at the lovely Beaufort Inn.

If we had spent more for the view, this is what we would have seen from our room.  But we went cheap this night, so our room opened out onto a small patio separated from the parking lot by hedges.  But the room itself was nice.

David went for a run around the town while I planned out our itinerary for the rest of the week.  Afterwards, we walked to the quaint little downtown (one main street) and had to choose between several places to eat.  We ended up at the Front Street Grill, which was completely empty inside because everyone was outside on the back patio.

What a nice place to just sit and relax.  I finally got some shrimp & grits with a side of fried okra, and it was wonderful.

The next morning, we went to the Maritime Museum, which has the distinction of displaying the remains of the wreckage of Blackbeard's ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge. The exhibit was fascinating and very well done.

We walked around downtown Beaufort and did some shopping until it was time to leave for the Ocracoke Ferry, which is a story for another day.

Spending Time in Charleston, SC

We arrived in Charleston by train at 5am.  This was a little jarring, and it was still dark outside.  Fortunately, there were also taxis outside, and we took one to the place where we were going to spend that night, The Barsdale House Inn.  

The Inn was a lovely place, but there was nobody awake there at approximately 5:20am, so we made our way to the back porch and hung out until the lady who makes breakfast came at 6.  Since we weren't included in this breakfast (having not stayed the night before), we left our bags in the lobby and made our way over to Toast, which had thankfully opened up at 6am.  

As part of their breakfast menu, Toast has bottomless mimosas for $12.

Lets just say that by about 6:45, we might have been quite, well, toasted. It was quite a way to start a vacation.

Toast's menu was quite good, too.  I had a eggs benedict variation that involved a crab cake and a fried green tomato, and David's stuffed French toast was delicious.  

After a bit of sobering up and sleeping whist sitting in a chair back at the Inn, we ventured out to see Charleston.  We started with a carriage ride tour, which is extremely popular. There are several different companies competing for your business, so you can get a discount on the stated price if you just ask. 

Since the tours are so popular, they have a little lottery for which route your particular carriage will get.  This helps cut down on traffic problems, as cars had to maneuver around us. (They also have little flags to drop if a horse urinates on the street, and then someone goes around behind to collect the flags and power wash the street.) 

We saw a lot of beautiful architecture, and we also learned that Charleston has really been affected by fires in its long history.  There were churches that had been rebuilt 3 times due to fire.

I took a picture of this particular house since the doors were so pretty.  If I hadn't woken up at 4:30 that day, and if there weren't bottomless mimosas, I might have remembered more.  But instead, we have "so pretty".

After the tour, we walked around the Old Market, which had lots of wares ranging from cheap and Chinese-made to expensive and authentic. There were a lot of beautiful handwoven baskets and a variety of places to buy hot sauces.

At this point, I was too tired to make any more decisions, so we went back to the B&B. They were extremely sympathetic and set off to clean our room so we could check in early, and we had an hour to wait.  David and I had lunch at Hyman's Seafood Restaurant.  David was certain that he had seen a fried green tomato po' boy at their carry-out portion of the restaurant, although this turned out to be a mirage.  BUT, they were happy to make one for him, so we split that, some hush puppies, and some fried okra.  The staff at Hyman's could not be nicer or more accomodating.  Also, according to some tiny plaques, Oprah had previously sat at the space David sat at, and Sinbad sat at my space.  

The State House

After getting back to the B&B, and into our (gorgeous) room, and having a nap, David and I sat on the back porch, drank some sweet tea, and planned out the rest of the week.  Well, we made a rough outline anyway.  And then we walked around a little bit, and had dinner at Closed for Business.

In addition to the great name, Closed For Business had a huge beer list, a great house-made veggie burger, and a deeply satisfying sandwich called a pork slap. David and I ordered four 10 oz beers, mostly local to the Carolinas, and made our own sampler to share.  

We then headed over to the meeting point for the Ghost Tour, which was a lot of fun despite the 10 minutes of pounding rain at the very beginning.  The rain thinned out our group dramatically, and we were somewhat dried off by the end of the tour.  We got to visit Charleston's oldest graveyard, which had some interesting historical stories.

As far as I know, no ghosts were seen on our tour.

A Pretty Church we saw on our walk.

The next day, we rented a car and drove to the Francis Marion National Forest, which was about 20 minutes north of Charleston.  We went on a very nice 3 mile hike here, and we must have been the first ones to do it that day, because we broke through several spider webs along the path.  But it was very pretty.

The trail was seven miles long, and we were planning to hike only part of it.  We might have hiked longer than 1.5 miles before we turned around had we brought our own bug spray.  But we didn't, and it was quite clear that the bug spray we had applied at the hotel had worn off.  David pointed out that I was being follwed by a cloud of mosquitoes. (I felt I would have been happier without that information.)  I was covered with bug bites the next day.  I think David had a few.

After we got back out of the woods and off the trail, we walked over to the water where there was a dock.  It really was a beautiful day.

After that, we made our way further up the coast. And that's a story for a different day.

Overnight Train Trip

My husband David and recently got back from a trip to North and South Carolina.  We traveled a few different ways on our trip, and the first method of travel was an overnight train to Charleston.  In addition to paying the ticket price to travel, we also rented a tiny room on the train so we would have a place to sleep.

The train got into Trenton at about 4 in the afternoon.

We got on the train and found our assigned train car and room.  Once we found our room, our steward came to introduce himself and tell us about the trip.  Dinner was either at 5 or 6 (we chose 6) and he would help us turn our room into sleeping quarters around 9:30. 

This is a panoramic of our room, which makes it look deceivingly large.

If you've ever been on an Amtrak train, think about how wide it is on one side of an aisle.  That is how wide our room was.  You can see through the window on our door into the other room on the other side of the aisle.  The seats are a little wider than a normal Amtrak seat, and right next to David is the bathroom area of our room.  The toilet seat is folded down, and also serves as a step to get up to the upper bunk and suitcase storage area.  The burgundy square to the left of David's head is the sink.  It folds down when in use, and when you fold it back up, all the water falls down inside to a drainage area. 

In between the seats (which face each other), there is a small fold out table.  Next to my seat, there was a small shelf for storage and also all of the controls for lights and A/C. 

The ride was quite comfortable, although it was small  I don't see any way that more than two people could ride in this car. Even a small child probably would be too big of a third person in this space!  And if you need to make use of the toilet, you need to either be comforable with someone sitting so close to you that you are within an inch of touching, or you need to ask them to leave the room for a while. There was a shower available for us to use; it was in a room at the end of our train car.

On the way to dinner, we passed the bigger rooms that were available on the train.  They took up the width of 4 Amtrak seats, with a narrow aisle on the far side of the train to get past them.  It looked like this would be large enough for a small family, with a small bunk above and a larger bed below.

We had dinner in the dining car, which had four person tables set up throughout it.  They asked us to sit side-by-side so that other people could sit across from us if they needed the space.  The meal was included in the price of our room fee, alcohol costed extra.  I would say the food was pretty good for a train, and mediocre compared to a restaurant.  Although the cream puff desert was pretty good.

After dinner, David and I fit in a game of Forbidden Island, which was actually a little too big to fit on our table, but we managed.

We played this game almost completely at the station stop in Washington, DC.  They change the engines in DC from electric to diesel, and the train was in the station for about an hour.

We tried to go to bed early, as our stop in Charleston was at 5:06am.  Our steward came and folded down the beds.  I'm sorry I didn't take pictures of this step!  The seats were folded down flat, and a little pad with sheets and a blanket were placed on top of them.  "Upstairs" the upper bunk was brought down so that it was at about 5 feet off the floor.  At this point, there was very little space to stand, so you really could do little else than lie down.

This is the remaining floor space in the room, enough for two pairs of shoes and little else!

I slept on the bottom bunk. 

David seemed to sleep pretty well on the train, but I was having trouble.  I realized that this was partly because of the train whistle. I had never before paid attention to how often it is used, but it was quite often.  (I want to say it was nearly constant, but that was probably my sleep-deprived opinion.) Once I figured this out, I found some earplugs and slept much better, albeit fitfully. 

The steward woke us at about 4:30 and we were ready to disembark at 5.  What a trip! I would be willing to travel this way again, especially if I have earplugs, and perhaps with a station stop that gets in a little later in the morning.

Kristy Isn't Home

I like to travel.  As I begin this blog, I have visited five continents, 17 countries, and 41 states. I thought perhaps I would archive my travel experiences here, and hopefully some of you will find this space useful and inspiring for your future travels.  Or perhaps you would like to see a little bit about a place you haven't been.  Whatever brings you here, welcome!